Newsreel
Bush book on hold
IBRAHIM Atta El-Fayoumi, secretary-general of the Islamic Research Academy, has denied approving the release of a biography of the Prophet Mohamed by a distant relative of George W Bush.
El-Fayoumi told Al-Ahram that a report written by the academy on the book, The Life of Mohamed, founder of the religion of Islam, and of the Empire of the Saracens, had not yet been approved and will be deliberated today at an academy session headed by Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi.
Maher El-Haddad, a senior official at the academy, told Al-Ahram that the book had to go through the usual procedures, starting with being revised by a specialist recommended by the academy's Research and Translation Department. El-Haddad added that if the examiner rejected the book it would then be submitted to the academy's board which will decide whether to approve the report or ask for a new one prepared by another academy scholar.
The book was published in 1837 by Bush, a prominent Biblical scholar and preacher whom Egyptian newspapers attributed as the US president's great grandfather. However, the US administration said the author is "a distant relative of the current president, five generations removed, but not his direct ancestor," AFP news agency reported.
The long forgotten volume was withheld for more than a century until after Bush's election, AFP reported.
Seeking release
THE UNITED Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for an end to the detention of Egyptian Shiite Mohamed El-Derini, who was arrested on 22 March 2004 along with a group of other Egyptian Shia Muslims. All the other detainees have since been released. "Having found the detention of El-Derini to be arbitrary, the Working Group requests the Arab Republic of Egypt to take necessary steps to remedy the situation," the group said in a statement issued late last week.
A Cairo court has ordered El-Derini's release four times; the last ruling was issued on 19 June. He remains jailed based on an Interior Ministry administrative detention order. "Keeping a person in administrative detention once his release has been ordered by the court competent to exercise control over the legality of detention renders the deprivation of liberty arbitrary," the statement said.
An Egyptian Shiite group claimed that police targeted El-Derini because of his attempts to establish a forum recognising Egyptian Shiites as a "minority." Others say El-Derini was arrested for trying to promote the idea that Prophet Mohamed's decendents should rule Muslim countries.
Rights groups promised to continue to pursue El-Derini's release. "We will use every local and international mechanism available to us until Mohamed El-Derini is released or referred to trial," said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Hunger strike
ON MONDAY, 18 Islamists being held in south Cairo's Tora Prison began a hunger strike to protest the conditions of their imprisonment.
According to an Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) press release, the 18 prisoners were arrested in 2002 on charges of involvement in an Islamist militant group. EOHR said the prisoners began their hunger strike after five of the 18 were transferred from Tora. "They are also being terrorised by police dogs ... and have been forbidden to continue their education," the EOHR said.
The rights group appealed to the interior minister to order an independent investigation into the treatment of Tora prisoners.
Night in the open
ON SUNDAY, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing, allowing Palestinians stuck at the border with Israeli-occupied Gaza back into Egypt. "Large numbers of Palestinians seeking to cross into the Gaza Strip from Egypt have been massing at the border crossing for three days," said one Egyptian border official in Rafah.
The Egyptian border official said Israeli forces had stepped up security at the border and were only letting a very slow trickle across. Although the crossing point is open from 9am to 5pm daily, Israel continues to arbitrarily refuse movement for many Palestinians between the ages of 16 and 35.
Saleem Abu Safiyya, who heads the Border Crossings department at the Palestinian Authority, said that more than 2500 people were stuck at the crossing for 24 hours after Israel prevented their entrance. They were unable to return to the Egyptian side of Rafah because they had already completed their exit paperwork. Some slept on the ground or in the buses waiting to cross; there were also reports that some of those stuck in the borderland limbo were facing health hazards, having just undergone medical treatment while abroad.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/749/eg3.htm