This report comes from The Guardian, and it's striking. The author is Robert Tait, a senior correspondent for RFE/RL (an American radio station in Prague) and a former Guardian reporter.
This is a first-hand account of 28 hours inside an Egyptian security facility, after being stopped at a police checkpoint, identified as a journalist, and taken into custody. It was a harrowing experience (my emphasis, so you spot the names you should recognize):
The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electric shock device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.The Mukhabarat (al-Mukhabarat Al-'Ammah) is described here, and yes, Suleiman ran it from 1993—2011. (Other elements of the Egyptian security and police apparatus are detailed here.) According to Jane Mayer, Suleiman was the U.S. go-to guy for rendition-and-torture trips to Egypt.
A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: "In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave – electrocution and rape."
Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.
I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule.
While Tait was not harmed, his story is pretty graphic. He concludes: "I had flown to Cairo to find out what was ailing so many Egyptians. I did not expect to learn the answer so graphically."
Keep this in mind as the days and weeks unfold. None of this is unknown in Egypt. If Suleiman wins, Egypt loses (despite what Tamron Hall thinks).
GP
