SHARM EL-SHEIKH - After more than 20 years of living with tough security measures, migrant workers and residents in Sharm el-Sheikh are desperately awaiting that their disgraced neighbour, Hosni Mubarak, will be leaving the city. The 83-year-old former president, currently being detained in the resort's medical centre, is expected to be moved soon to a military medical centre near Cairo. Mubarak is facing several charges, including ordering police to kill demonstrators in Al Tahrir Square during the revolution against his regime. Together with his family, the ex-president has also been accused of the abuse of power and illegally amassing gains in the form of vast sums of money, grand palaces, chalets and villas in different parts of the country. There have been recent reports that Mubarak will be moved to the Torah prison in Cairo. Mubarak was last month moved to the medical centre in Sharm el-Sheikh, after his heart started beating irregularly. Hundreds of owners of tourist projects, their workers and local residents have recently demonstrated outside the Sharm el-Sheikh Hospital, urging the military rulers to move Mubarak out of the popular tourist destination, so that they can get on with their everyday lives and their work. Despite his imminent departure for good, these people confess that it will take some time for them to banish the spectre of the ex-president from their minds. They claim that his presence in Sharm el-Sheikh, his favourite retreat for many years, has undermined their economic prospects. “It's been a nightmare: his presidential guards and the security authorities in the city have put up checkpoints everywhere. They also barricaded the roads leading to Mubarak's villa. Everybody working or living in Sharm was a suspect,” says one migrant worker from Kafr el-Sheikh, working in a restaurant in this South Sinai resort. Ashraf Abdel-Naeem says that the city has been under a permanent state of emergency. “Whenever a crime was committed in Sinai, the security authorities would interrogate everyone in Sharm,” he explains. The Sinai Bedouin, the original inhabitants of the city, say that the international fame Sharm gained under Mubarak was a nightmare for them. A series of international peace conferences and meetings earned Sharm its global reputation as the ‘City of Peace'. But it wasn't peaceful for the people, who live and work there! A young Bedouin man protests that they were denied access to several parts of their city. “Mubarak's security men suspected us of dealing in arms and drugs, and colluding with the enemy [Israel]. The fact is that Bedouin tribes are the unsung heroes of the wars Egypt fought against the Israelis,” he says. “Things suddenly changed, when the Public Prosecutor remanded Mubarak in detention for 15 days, pending further investigation and his tough security men and presidential guards disappeared, although a few security men linger on, guarding him in the city's medical centre,” Abdel-Naeem explains. Furthermore, the young revolutionaries have removed graffiti from the walls of buildings in the city, that praised Egypt's disgraced leader.
