CAIRO: Prominent Egyptian newspapers this week highlighted the American State Department's annual report on terrorism and Gamal Mubarak`s Facebook fan page that was hacked earlier last week as well as Coptic issues, which are still taking hold of the local press. Local newspapers addressed and highlighted the annual report of the US State Department on Terrorism for the year 2009, which stated that the Egyptian Government fights vigorously in the face of terrorism and security efforts, having made Egypt “a destination that is not attractive to terrorist groups,” but added that the northern Sinai area “used to be a base for smuggling weapons and explosives into Gaza and is a transit point for Palestinians coming from Gaza.” The report said that there are officials from Hamas that pass huge amounts of money across the border and that the “smuggling of human beings, arms and other prohibited materials through Sinai to Israel, has created a criminal network that may be linked to terrorist groups in the region.” The report added that the authorities that are owned by the Egyptian President, in the face of terrorism comes mostly from the Emergency Law, which has been in place in Egypt since 1981 and was renewed for an additional two years by the Egyptian parliament earlier this year. The report pointed out that President Mubarak's promise to end the emergency law and replace it with a law against terrorism and that Egypt “should serve as an example of the countries that recently passed comprehensive laws to combat terrorism.” And Egypt kept the security measures in the Suez Canal, the report said, adding that terrorists in Egypt “have been prosecuted throughout history with the maximum penalties under the law, in particular the Egyptian regime does not recognize the system of bargaining and compromise,” saying that in some cases, “there were trials before military tribunals or emergency courts.” In a different context, the Leader of the al-Ghad Party, Ayman Nour, wrote in his daily column in al-Dostour that on the case of hacking Gamal Mubrak's fan page, “a group hacked the fan page of Gamal Mubarak, the Secretary General of the Policies Committee of the National Democratic Party (NDP), who is also rumored to be the leading candidate to succeed his father Hosni Mubarak for president.” On Sunday morning, Facebook fan page administrators reported someone had changed the contents of the electronic signatures on the campaign to support the younger Mubarak for “President of Egypt in 2011.” The hackers replaced the picture with the slogan “yes to Gamal Mubarak” with another carrying the slogan “you are unwanted, you and your Father.” For his part, Nour said “what is more evil, hacking his page or hacking Egypt as a whole?” He stressed that he and his party are against hacking and that they condemn such behavior, stressing that his party is also refusing “the bequeathal of power in Egypt to the president`s son” and that his party tries to fight against the bequeathal and “the monopoly of power by a certain family, and the right of Egyptians to choose their president by democratic, transparent and fair mechanisms.” He accused Gamal Mubarak of monopolizing Egyptian political life when his father's ruling party “did not accept the existence of rivals or powerful opposition parties.” Mahmoud Muslim, a commentator for al-Masry al-Youm, addressing the way the Coptic Church deals with its own peoples' crises, advised the Church to “open up an internal dialogue on many issues, most notably the second marriage, the ruling of the Supreme Constitutional despite being odd, which overturned a previous ruling to allow marriage for those who were divorced and made the crisis continue with the presence of applications from within the Church requesting permission to marry after getting a divorce.” He added that the second thing that needs a dialogue within the Church is “the attitude of some members towards any Christian who declares his conversion to Islam. It is inconsistent with the Constitution and freedom of religion. “We cannot just take to the streets to demonstrate just because someone converted to Islam; in return, Muslims do not take such a position if a Muslim converts to Christianity,” he wrote. He continued to say that “if the government is weak in establishing the rights of Christians to build churches and in confronting the implementation of the law to prevent demonstrating in worship houses, then the Copts are obliged to open a dialogue among themselves about the causes of sectarian concepts of young people, whether Christian clergy are one, as the Government tried to exclude those Sheikhs who cause the spread of Sectarian Tensions, while the Church didn't declare similar procedures.” BM
