CAIRO: Mona El-Gharib, an Egyptian 25-year-old pregnant student at al-Azhar University and wife of a Syrian dissident was reported to be kidnapped in Cairo on Friday afternoon. Thaer El-Nashef, her Syrian husband, was informed of the kidnapping through an anonymous text message, Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, said. “We have your wife and we are going to sexually assault her so that you learn how not to insult your masters again,” El-Nashef cited the text message. According to El-Nashef, she left their home in Mohandessin to visit her parents nearly two miles away. But she never got there. El-Nashef is a journalist and serves as a TV anchor for several networks, including January 25 TV, which was launched after the revolution to topple Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Until 2006, he had worked as a correspondent for Syria's state-agency SANA. Since 2007, he has been living in Egypt, appearing often on Egyptian TV-shows, discussing the uprisings and being a vocal opponent of the regime. In recent weeks, several reports have cited kidnappings and the disappearance of Syrian citizens. In Lebanon, where thousands of Syrians have crossed in order to escape unrest in their country, Prime Minister Najib Mikati confirmed in an interview on November 4 that opposition figures from Syria had been kidnapped in Lebanon. According to CNN, the US State Department announced this summer that “it had received reports that Syrian mission personnel had been conducting video surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States.” As he had been receiving other threats from Syrian agents for weeks, El-Nashef blames the Syrian intelligence operating in Egypt for the kidnapping. While protesters are gathering at the Syrian Embassy, the Egyptian police is currently trying to find out the origin of the text messages. Although Al-Nashef said he received further text messages, including one that threatened that his wife would be raped, and another saying his wife would be killed if he went to the media with the story, he has filed a complaint about the kidnapping. Syria is facing mounting international pressure to end a bloody crackdown on an uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad. More than 3,500 people have been killed so far and the Arab League was meeting Saturday to consider the possibility of sweeping economic sanctions. The Syrian Embassy in Egypt issued a statement in which it strongly denied the claim, calling it “lies fabricated by Syrian dissidents in Egypt” seeking to harm Syrian-Egyptian relations. BM
