Imprisoned Egyptian satirist Shady Abu Zeid during his father’s funeral. Source: Twitter.
Scene One
President Abdelfattah Al Sissi, Egypt`s military autocrat is having an interview with the American television program 60 minutes, on CBS. Unlike other interviews, with the Egyptian media, the President seems tense, with visible beads of sweat on his face and around his lips, as he denies the existence of political prisoners in the country, in-spite of the interviewer confronting him with a Human Rights Watch report, claiming the existence of, at least, 60000 political prisoners. Later in the interview, the President claims that the Rabba sit-in, the protest camp set-up by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, after the coup of 2013 that brought Sissi to power, was an armed sit-in. The dispersal of the protest camp led to the death of a minimum of 817 protestors. The interviewer then confronts Sissi that based on the figures released by the Egyptian government, only a handful of weapons were found in the protests camp. Sissi continues his denials, and questions the credibility of the figures.
Scene 2
It has been over 115 days since the disappearance of Mostafa El-Naggar. Mostafa was a prominent leader of the 25th of January mass protests, in 2011, which led to the overthrow of Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak. He was also a Member of Parliament during Egypt`s brief democratic experiment in 2012. After the coup of 2013. El-Naggar has kept a low public profile, trying to steer away from politics, and to focus on charity work. He is embroiled in a case, related to “insulting the judiciary”, where he has been sentenced to three years in prison. The case appears to be politically motivated. The Egyptian government has denied that it is holding El-Naggar, and there are unconfirmed reports that he was killed by border patrols as he was trying to cross the border into Sudan. The fate of El-Naggar remains unknown, however, as time passes, the bleakest possibilities for this father of three becomes more probable.
