Newsreel

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Religious lines

EGYPT is currently cooperating with several other members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to forward a joint initiative to both the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council to prohibit the defamation of religions.

According to a press statement issued by the office of the foreign minister, the draft initiative will be presented to an OIC foreign ministers meeting to convene in Islamabad during the first week of May. Once approved by the ministerial meeting, the draft will be put for adoption in the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.

Written statements by Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit say the crux of the resolution is to draw a line between the freedom of opinion and the freedom of expression of opinions on religious creeds. According to Abul-Gheit, while individuals are free to entertain whichever ideas they wish regarding religion, their expression of such ideas needs to refrain from offending the sentiments of believers.

The proposed resolution, the Foreign Ministry says, was originally an Egyptian proposal presented last week during a meeting of the foreign ministers of seven OIC member states in Islamabad. Abul-Gheit said the proposals were welcomed by counterparts from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

The final communiqué issued by the Islamabad meeting last week expressed the participants' "deep concern over campaigns to malign the noble faith of Islam. Such acts and trends must be effectively dealt with and defeated."

Talks with NATO

ON THE SIDELINES of his visit to Brussels to sign the New Neighbourhood Initiative, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit met NATO Secretary-General Japp de Hoop Scheffer. The meeting, at NATO headquarters, covered a wide range of regional developments. The meeting was held within the agreed upon framework to enhance the political dimension of the NATO Mediterranean dialogue launched in 2004.

The Abul-Gheit and Scheffer talks come against a backdrop of security disturbances in the Middle East and a debate on potential, perhaps feared intervention by NATO in some conflict spots around the Arab world.

Freed in Iran

EGYPTIAN authorities have managed to release 13 Egyptians from Iranian jails who had been held for nearly four weeks, Assistant Foreign Minister Mohamed El-Menissi said. El-Menissi said contacts with the Iranian authorities were promptly made "as soon as the information was forwarded to the Foreign Ministry."

The drama started a few months ago when the men left Egypt in search of jobs. They had no legal documents to grant them residence or job opportunities in either Libya or Turkey. From Turkey, the Egyptians ended up in northern Iraq and then onto the Iranian borders before they were arrested and put in jail.

Speaking to reporters upon their return to Egypt, the men said that upon their arrest they claimed to be Palestinians for fear of maltreatment by the Iranian authorities if their true identity was revealed.

It was the release of an Iraqi prisoner from an Iranian jail that granted the men eventual release from their captivity. The Iraqi notified the Egyptian authorities who then took all the necessary legal procedures to secure their release.

In their press statements in Egypt, the men said their story was no different from the destiny of many other young Egyptians who are forced by their prolonged unemployment to pursue uncertain offers.

Officers in court

OFFICERS Islam Nabih and Reda Fatih, accused last month of torturing a detainee, appeared at the Giza Criminal Court on Saturday for their first court hearing.

The case was brought to the public's attention after a video circulated on the Internet showed an officer giving an order to a policeman to sodomise a detainee. The detainee, bus driver Imad El-Kebir, was arrested and taken to Bulaq Al-Dakrour police station where he was allegedly tortured after he tried to intervene in a street fight between his cousin and a police officer. In the station, alleged acts of torture were filmed by a mobile phone camera and circulated by the officers among microbus drivers to serve as a deterrent.

The video resulted in the arrest of the officers allegedly responsible.

Nabih and Fatih attended last week's court hearing accompanied by 20 lawyers who argued that the January 2006 video was a forgery and that their clients were not in the police station the day the incident was alleged to have happened.

When the officers were arrested in December, prosecutors brought in experts to ascertain the veracity of the video and identify the policemen's voices but their lawyers asked for another expert to check the video.

"The fact that the people who tortured El-Kebir videotaped their crime suggests they thought they could get away with it," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said earlier this year. "The government must end the culture of impunity that gave them this idea," Whitson added.

A further hearing will be held on 2 April.

El-Kebir is currently in jail serving a three-month sentence for resisting authorities.

Lost vision

SOME 20 patients have reportedly lost their eyesight after undergoing cataract and glaucoma operations at Gamal Abdel-Nasser Hospital in Alexandria. A report on the hospital's medical laboratories has confirmed the contamination of Pilocarpine ampoules, which is used to inject the eye to close its pupil, causing vision loss. The report said a microbe had caused severe post-operative inflammations of the optic nerve and iris. However, the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) has issued a press release denying the fact that 20 patients out of 870 who have undergone optical operations at Gamal Abdel-Nasser Hospital since December had lost their vision. According to Abdel-Rahman Shahin, the official spokesman of MOHP, a committee formed at the request of Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali has preliminary confirmed that only four patients are suffering from diminution of vision due to minor inflammations in the eye's vitreous body and iris. "The committee has confiscated the remaining 400 ampoules in the hospital to be analysed at the ministry's laboratories," Shahin said, adding that El-Gabali had ordered a shutdown of the hospital's operating theatre until an investigation is complete.

The hospital's report said Pilocarpine ampoules are usually imported from the US. Those contaminated were imported from India. They were made of plastic, not glass, resulting in swift contamination. All ampoules imported after mid-January should be destroyed, the report recommended.

Ferry case continues

A SIXTH court session hearing evidence into the sinking of the El-Salam ferry opened on Monday. Despite a summons issued by Interpol, two defendants in the case, Mamdouh Ismail, owner of the ferry, and his son Omar, deputy board chairman of El-Sallam Company, are still at large in London, as are three other defendants. All five face charges of negligence, failure to take action to save the ship's passengers and failure to inform the authorities after being informed of the mishap.

A sixth defendant, Mahmoud Abdel-Qader Orabi, the ship's arsenal director, has been released.

El-Sallam sank in the Red Sea on 3 February, killing 1,033 in one of the world's worst maritime disasters. It was headed for the Egyptian Red Sea port of Safaga, 600km southwest of Cairo after leaving the port of Dabaa in Saudi Arabia. Only 388 people, mostly Egyptians, survived.

Fake medicine

THE VIENNA-based International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has warned that the flood of counterfeit medicines which are now available in many countries could have fatal consequences for consumers. Reem Leila attended the launching of a report issued by the INCB at the United Nations Information Centre in Cairo.

In its annual report released last week, the board also called on member states to enforce legislation to ensure that narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances are not illegally manufactured or diverted from licit manufacture and distribution channels to unregulated markets. The existence of such markets means that substandard and sometimes even lethal medication is sold to the unsuspecting consumer. Unregulated markets are often supplied with stolen and diverted drugs, illicitly manufactured pharmaceuticals or through illegal sales on the Internet and distributed through mail and courier services.

The report warned the danger was real. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 25 to 50 per cent of medicines consumed in developing countries are believed to be counterfeit. The problem, according to the report, is further compounded by the fact that counterfeit drugs are easy to manufacture; they can resemble genuine drugs in packing and labelling. Consumers have experienced serious health or even lethal consequences. In Africa, the use of counterfeit vaccines in 1995 resulted in 2,500 deaths.

Narcotics, benzodiazepines, amphetamines and other internationally controlled drugs are easily available in street markets in several developing countries. In developed countries, these drugs are sold via illegal Internet pharmacies without mandatory prescriptions.