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The Call for Help Obama Hasn't Answered
November 20, 2008 1:18 PM
By JIM SCIUTTO, Senior Foreign Correspondent, ABC News London
From his prison cell in Cairo, Ayman Nour took a risk two months ago. He wrote a letter to Barack Obama.
Nour is not a typical prisoner. In 2005, he was a candidate in the first presidential elections here in decades, running against Egypt's longtime ruler, Hosni Mubarak.
Nour had the enthusiastic support of Bush administration officials, who said the elections and Nour's admittedly quixotic run were signs of a democratic wave sweeping the region -- from Iraq, which held elections in January that year, to Lebanon, where pro-democracy protesters pushed out occupying Syrian troops in March. Nour lost, though he made a respectable showing.
But a few weeks after the vote, he was thrown in jail on trumped-up charges of faking signatures on the petition for candidacy. Three years later, he's still there.
His wife, Gameela Ismail, told me today that he wrote to Obama because he feels Obama is part of a new generation of leaders, one Nour hopes will push the Egyptian regime harder than past American presidents, who looked the other way when Egypt cracked down, often brutally, on the opposition.
When Obama won the election, Nour's fellow inmates congratulated him, saying "his man" had made it. Outside the prison, though, he paid a price. On Nov 5, government troops marched on the offices of Nour's opposition party, calling Nour "an American agent" and "Obama's lover."
Though Egypt is an American ally receiving billion of dollars in aid a year, the government frequently tars its opponents with the charge of cozying up to the United States. The troops gutted the office with firebombs.
Nour's wife, Gameela, barely escaped alive. Seeing the burned-out building today, I could see she was lucky.
Since then, Nour has had no response from the Obama camp, nor from U.S. Embassy officials. He's still hoping Obama will be different from Bush. Frustrated by three years of fighting for her hsband's release with no American help, Gameela, however, says she has given up hope.
"There's been so much disappointment," she told me. "We were victims of hope. I won't let that happen again."
Read more blogs by Jim Sciutto
November 20, 2008 in Jim Sciutto | Permalink | User Comments (5)
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i'm sure that letter wasn't intercepted by the people who want to keep him in jail, right? right???
Posted by: amanda | Nov 20, 2008 1:32:00 PM
This story is one taht should be told... Are they sure that Obama received the letter? He is NOT offically the POTUS and can only make inquiries under the radar for now. Like so many other things on his plate, I am sure that this will be another point in our foreign relations in dealing with NON-democratic societies and giving them money to squelch freedom.
If Egypt doesn't like the US so much - they should stop taking our money! Better yet, we should stop giving it to them!
Our next POTUS will have his hands full on day one- the whole world is wating - not just the auto industry.
Posted by: Independant Woman | Nov 20, 2008 2:13:34 PM
That is: the whole world is waiting.
Posted by: Independant Woman | Nov 20, 2008 2:15:00 PM
Is this surprising? I really don't think that we can expect any muscle on Obama's part for the next four years.
Posted by: Patriot | Nov 20, 2008 10:55:06 PM
The only muscle Obama uses is his mouth! He's going to be busy enough trying to push off the blame for everything he screws up in Washington to have time to deal with anything like this!
Posted by: Raspy | Nov 23, 2008 4:13:01 PM
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