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The family of an Egyptian journalist who has been detained for nine months without charge expressed outrage on Thursday that images of him were leaked to a Facebook page run by sympathizers of the Interior Ministry.
The reporter, Abdullah Elshamy, is an Al Jazeera correspondent who was swept up by the military-backed government during its bloody raid on an Islamist sit-in in Cairo last Aug. 14. He began a hunger strike four months ago to draw attention to his prolonged detention without trial.
He was transferred last week to solitary confinement in the notorious wing of Cairo’s Tora prison known as Scorpion after he managed to record a surreptitious video message from his cell. In a letter from prison, Mr. Elshamy wrote that the authorities had tried to force-feed him. The images posted on Facebook on Wednesday showed him holding pieces of food, but his brother Mosa’ab, a photographer, suggested that they had been staged.
One of the stars of “Happy in Tehran,” an exuberant music video that offended the sensibilities of Iran’s conservative judiciary, reported on Instagram Wednesday that she was free, three days after the police had stormed into her apartment and carted her and five friends off to jail.
The young woman, Reihane Taravati, posted a photograph of herself, captioned “Hi, I’m back,” and thanked everyone who had called for the group’s release. That included the singer Pharrell Williams, whose video for the song “Happy” had inspired the young Iranians to produce their cover version, joining thousands of their contemporaries in nations around the world. (Ms. Taravati also warned friends that she had lost control of her Facebook page.)
After days of interrogation and harsh treatment, all six of the detained dancers were released on bail Wednesday, the expatriate news site Iran Wire reported. Before they were set free, the group was paraded on state television as a warning to the youth of the nation that those who ignore strict Islamic standards of modesty in public will be punished. Read more…
A copy of the video “Happy in Tehran,” originally posted on YouTube in April.
Last Updated, 11:00 p.m. | Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television Tuesday for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube last month.
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An image of the "Happy in Tehran" dancers posted on Instagram.Credit
By uploading their video, recorded on an iPhone and promoted on Facebook and Instagram, the group was taking part in a global online phenomenon, which has resulted, so far, in hundreds of cover versions of the Pharrell Williams song “Happy” recorded in more than 140 countries.
“Happy in Tehran” was viewed more than 165,000 times on YouTube before it attracted the attention of the police and was made private. Read more…
A video report posted online Monday by the Palestinian branch of Defense for Children International.
Last Updated, Tuesday, 3:47 p.m. | Security-camera footage obtained by the rights group Defense for Children International appears to show the fatal shooting of two young Palestinians on Thursday during a demonstration in Beitunia, a West Bank town outside Ramallah.
The rights group published the footage on Monday in a video report that also includes the testimony of a witness, Fakher Zayed. Mr. Zayed owns a building near the Israeli occupation authority’s Ofer Prison, where more than 100 Palestinians have been on a hunger strike for weeks, and it was his security camera that recorded the incident. The demonstration was in commemoration of what Palestinians call the “catastrophe,” or “nakba,” of Israel’s creation in 1948, during which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes into exile.
At least one of the young men killed in the incident, Nadeem Siam Nawara, was a 17-year-old student. Palestinian health officials initially told The Times that the other victim, Muhammad Odeh Abu al Daher, was 20, and later revised that to 16, while the Palestinian Center for Human Rights subsequently reported that he too was 17. Read more…
Video of an interview with Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party.
In a contentious radio interview that sounded at moments like Absurdist theater, the leader of the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, denied on Friday that his attacks on foreign-born migrants were racist.
Mr. Farage, a member of the European Parliament who blames membership in the European Union for a host of economic and social problems, was asked about comments he made in February, when he said he was uncomfortable during a recent train journey in London when he could hear only foreign languages being spoken by fellow passengers.
After Mr. Farage said that he was only expressing discomfort “at the rate and pace of change and numbers of people coming to London,” the interviewer with the talk radio station LBC, James O’Brien, pointed out that Mr. Farage’s wife is a German and presumably speaks the language in his presence.
“Yeah, I don’t suppose she speaks it on the train,” Mr. Farage replied, “that’s the point I’m making.”
“Why not? Is she not allowed to?” Mr. O’Brien asked. “Can’t she speak German wherever she wants?”
“Of course people are allowed to,” Mr. Farage said. Read more…
Yusuf Yerkel, an aide to Turkey's prime minister, was photographed kicking a man during protests on Wednesday in the city of Soma.Credit Depo Photos/European Pressphoto Agency
Last Updated, Saturday, 9:25 a.m. | One day after Turkey’s prime minister was jeered during a visit to the mining town of Soma, where at least 282 workers were killed this week in an accident, one of his senior advisers was forced to admit that he had kicked a protester being restrained by the police.
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Turkish bloggers were enraged by images of Mr. Yerkel, the deputy chief of Turkey's cabinet, kicking a protester during the prime minister's visit to the scene of a mine disaster on Wednesday.Credit Depo Photos/European Pressphoto Agency
The adviser, Yusuf Yerkel, acknowledged in an interview with the BBC’s Turkish-language service that he had been involved in the scuffle on Wednesday in the mining town of Soma, where Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was booed and called a “killer” during an ill-fated attempt to show sympathy with the families of the dead. Read more…
A smuggled video message from an Al Jazeera reporter, Abdullah Elshamy, who has been on hunger strike in an Egyptian jail for more than 100 days.
Al Jazeera released a brief video message on Wednesday from its detained West Africa correspondent, Abdullah Elshamy, recorded on the 106th day of his hunger strike in an Egyptian jail.
In the message, Mr. Elshamy explains that he was arrested in Cairo last Aug. 14 “while covering the dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adaweya sit-in” by Islamist supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi. “I was doing my job as a reporter, and despite the authorities knowing this I have been detained for 266 days without any charge and without committing any crime,” he says.
Video of Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, being booed on Wednesday in the city of Soma.
Last Updated, Friday, 9:12 a.m. | As rescuers battled Wednesday to save the lives of coal miners trapped underground in western Turkey, more than 24 hours after an explosion killed at least 274 at the site, anger at the authorities boiled over during a visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was booed and briefly forced to seek refuge in a shop in the nearby town of Soma.
The way #Erdogan is protested in #Soma b/c of coal mine accident is unpredecented. Many people booed him up close. Should be hard for him.
Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News and the online site Zete reported that Mr. Erdogan’s security detail removed the license plate from the prime minister’s car after his motorcade was set upon and he took shelter from protesters in a market.
Video uploaded to a Turkish YouTube account Wednesday, said to show protesters venting their anger on the prime minister’s motorcade in Soma.
Two young Egyptians detained last year during the military-backed government’s deadly crackdown on dissent face serious threats to their health after more than 100 days on hunger strike, according to medical reports made public in recent days.
Both Mohamed Soltan, a 26-year-old graduate of Ohio State University, and Abdullah Elshamy, a journalist for Al Jazeera, were in Rabaa al-Adaweya Square in Cairo last August when it was cleared in a bloody assault by the security forces. Mr. Soltan, who has dual American and Egyptian citizenship and whose Egyptian father belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, was shot in the arm as he documented the raid on Twitter. Mr. Elshamy, a correspondent for the Qatari network that gave sympathetic coverage to Egypt’s deposed Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, was detained the same day and has been held without charge ever since.
After prison authorities failed to persuade him to end his hunger strike last week on his 26th birthday, Mr. Elshamy was suddenly removed from his cell on Monday and “taken to an undisclosed location,” his brothers Mosa’ab and Mohammed reported on Twitter.
|@abdallahelshamy has been removed from his prison cell and taken to an unknown location. Trying to find out more.
