CAIRO: Mona el-Gharib, the Egyptian 25-year-old pregnant student at al-Azhar University and wife of a Syrian dissident, who was reported to be kidnapped in Cairo on Friday afternoon, was found Saturday afternoon in a suburb of Cairo. Thaer El-Nashef, her Syrian husband says his wife was found unconscious but alive “in bad medical condition on a street in the suburbs of Cairo by a woman who took her to the hospital.” Thaer El-Nashef, was informed of the kidnapping on Friday 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. Saturday, he received another message stating: “The Nile will deliver your wife's dead body. You killed her by opening with your big mouth to the media. You are next.” Who is responsible for the kidnapping is still unclear. El-Nashef went to the general prosecutor's office Saturday and was told officials have the phones of the suspected kidnappers under surveillance. 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. 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. As he had been receiving other threats from Syrian agents for weeks, El-Nashef blames the Syrian intelligence operating in Egypt for the kidnapping. 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.” 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. BM
