Newsreel

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Victim of terror

THE BODY of 10-year-old Rami Samir El-Ghoneimi, who was killed during the recent terrorist attack in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, arrived in Egypt on Monday night for burial. El-Ghoneimi's coffin -- accompanied by his father, mother and 14-year-old sister -- arrived at Cairo airport, and was met by family members and an assistant to the foreign minister.

Declining to speak to reporters, the family left the airport to bury Rami in Ganzour, a town in the Nile Delta governorate of Menoufiya.

Rami's father Samir had been quoted as saying his son was on his way to school when "the terrorists opened fire on the school bus, killing Rami and setting fire to the vehicle." Rami's sister managed to escape without injury.

El-Ghoneimi has been working for an oil company in Saudi Arabia for 20 years.

Twenty-two people died in last week's attack, during which militants raided a housing compound and held several people hostage.

NDP sweeps elections

WITH THE majority of opposition parties declining to participate, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) swept to an easy victory in the first stage of the 23-29 May Shura Council mid-term elections. Twenty-seven of a total 32 seats went to NDP candidates, while the other five were won by so-called NDP independents (party members who ran independently after the party declined to nominate them). Most of the independent NDPs who won were from the Upper Egyptian governorates of Giza and Beni Suef.

Wafd Party Chairman Noman Gomaa called the NDP's easy victory an act of self-deception. "This victory was a foregone conclusion in light of the fact that the NDP chairman is the president of the republic, and the chairman of its most influential committee is the president's son," Gomaa said.

The second stage of the Shura elections begins today, with 137 candidates vying for 26 seats in eight governorates (Sharqiya, Daqahliya, Damietta, Gharbiya, Suez, Sohag, South Sinai and the Red Sea), and run-offs scheduled for 9 June. A third stage will take place on 13 June, with candidates running for 30 seats in the remaining eight governorates.

Another blow

THE OUTLAWED Muslim Brotherhood was dealt another heavy blow this week, after the recent arrest of 54 of its members. On Sunday, the People's Assembly voted to strip Azab Mustafa, a Brotherhood MP from Giza, of his parliamentary membership. In doing so, the assembly was complying with a Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) ruling regarding Mustafa's victory in the 2000 parliamentary elections. The court said that the elections were conducted in spite of the fact that prior to election day, the Administrative Justice Court (AJC) ruled that NDP candidate Badr Mahrous be disqualified from running. AJC said Mahrous was running for a designated "worker's" seat even though he was actually a "professional".

The SAC ruled that a re-election for the Giza district's "worker's" seat be held, with Mahrous excluded from running.

Mustafa reacted to his dismissal by blaming the Interior Ministry for ignoring the implementation of the AJC's ruling in 2000. With the number of Brotherhood MPs in parliament down from 17 to 15 (another Brotherhood MP was removed earlier), the outlawed group accused the NDP of engineering the campaign against Mustafa in order to intimidate Brotherhood members from standing in next year's parliamentary elections and actively participating in politics in general.

The Brotherhood decried as unfair that Mustafa was not only stripped of his seat, but also barred by the interior minister from running in the Giza re-election. Brotherhood MPs called the decision to strip Mustafa of his seat "a clear manifestation of the NDP's double standards". Mustafa said it was a rehash of the legal scenario played out against former Brotherhood MP Gamal Heshmat -- a process, they emphasised, that had not been initiated against any NDP MP since 2000.

Mohamed Moussa, chairman of parliament's legislative and constitutional affairs committee, labelled the decision to strip Mustafa of his membership as being in strict compliance with a supreme court ruling, rather than an intentional attack against the Brotherhood.

Torture decried

ENTITLED Torture in Egypt -- an unchecked phenomenon, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) issued its 12th report on torture in Egyptian police stations and detention centres. The report cites 42 cases monitored by the EOHR between April 2003 and April 2004. The organisation suspects that the 14 cases that resulted in prisoners' deaths were either the result of torture or ill-treatment.

The EOHR has repeatedly warned that torture has become "increasingly widespread" in Egypt. Citing statistics gathered between 1993 and 2004, the report claimed that torture in various forms has reached "alarming proportions" across the nation, and is used on individuals from various social strata.

Although the EOHR also acknowledged the government's attempts to prosecute perpetrators of torture, it deemed these efforts as "inefficient", and lacking the necessary legislative support.

Egyptian sentenced

A KUWAITI criminal court sentenced Lotfi El-Barbari, an Egyptian truck driver, to five years in prison for trying to kill 13 US soldiers at their military camp last year. The defence has three weeks to challenge the sentence in a court of appeals.

The US military had accused the 31-year-old electrician of deliberately attempting to kill the Americans while he was in his pickup truck at Camp Udairi, in northern Kuwait, on 30 March 2003 -- less than two weeks after US forces invaded Iraq. El-Barbari was on the payroll of a local contractor working on a project in the desert camp.

El-Barbari, who was shot in the chest during the incident, denied the charges. His Egyptian defence team told the court in January that the soldiers fired at El-Barbari first. The incident occurred as sirens sounded to warn of an incoming Iraqi missile, the lawyers said. "The soldiers were tense and frightened. They saw the man and fired at him. He then rammed the truck into the servicemen, wounding only five, and not 15," as reported by the US military.

El-Barbari has been in prison since his arrest immediately following the incident.