Free Republic

Several pro-government Egyptian newspapers and media outlets are attacking the United States following the Bush administration's decision not to increase financial aid to the North African nation. The Egyptian press has attacked U.S. policy and policymakers in the past, usually at low points in the oft-rocky relationship between Washington and Cairo. But the new attacks are particularly vitriolic and have even gone so far as to compare some U.S. officials to Nazi Germany's Third Reich. "[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is a new Hitler in America," wrote columnist Kamal Abd Al-Raouf for the government weekly Akhbar Al-Yaum last week, predicting the...

<p>ATLANTA &#8212; Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim, recently freed from an Egyptian jail as a result of U.S. pressure, told an American audience yesterday he appreciated the help but that it had made his job tougher.</p> <p>The Bush administration "gave my government and demagogues cards to play that painted me as an American agent," Mr. Ibrahim said during a session with reporters at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Atlanta.</p>

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egypt's highest court acquitted an Egyptian-American human rights activist Tuesday of charges including tarnishing Egypt's image, closing a drawn-out case that drew international criticism and condemnation. "Thank God! Thank God!" Saad Eddin Ibrahim said amid eruptions of tears and joyful shrieks from spectators on hearing an innocent verdict after two previous convictions. "I feel I am walking on air." Ibrahim's adult daughter, Randa, cried with happiness and the chaos in the courtroom drowned out the acquittal of 26 co-defendants. Only one, Magda El-Beyh, was found guilty and she was given a six-month suspended sentence for forgery....

Persecution: Saad Eddin Ibrahim finds himself in court again, charged with defaming his nation. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the most prominent face and voice of human rights activism in Egypt, is back in the dock of a Cairo courtroom. A cage, to be more precise, as the Egyptians never gave up on that Napoleonic-era tradition. The 63-year-old professor, who holds U. S. citizenship, steps gingerly, with the help of a cane, into the defendants' cage, and sits alongside six co-defendants from his Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. The center, which received grants from abroad, found, among other things, that Egypt's...