Egyptian Court Overturns Last Conviction Against Mubarak

Egypt’s top appeals court overturned corruption convictions against former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, and ordered a retrial Tuesday. Mubarak was sentenced to three years in prison in May after being found guilty of embezzling over $17 million, and his sons received four-year sentences. In November the appeals court also dropped charges against Mubarak of conspiring to kill hundreds of protesters during the uprisings in 2011. This was the last remaining conviction against Mubarak, meaning he could possibly be released from prison. He has been detained since April 2011, and currently is being held in a Cairo military hospital. State media reported Mubarak will remain detained until the judiciary orders his release.

Syria-Iraq

The U.S.-led coalition reported Monday it had conducted 27 airstrikes targeting Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria in the past 24 hours. Hackers claiming sympathies to the Islamic State took over the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts for about 30 minutes Monday. Meanwhile, pro-government fighters clashed with Islamic State militants in the Iraqi town of Abasiyat, north of Baghdad, Monday following a suicide car bombing that killed 12 Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers.

Headlines

• A funeral was held in Jerusalem Tuesday for four Jewish victims of last week’s attack on a Kosher supermarket in Paris.
• Libyan militants proclaimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State said they are holding hostage 21 Egyptian Christians.
• Saudi Arabia has increased the prison sentence of human rights lawyer Walid Abu al-Khair to 15 years for failing to retract his views or show remorse after initial sedition charges.
• Bitter cold conditions from a severe winter storm over the past week have killed three infants and a fisherman in the Gaza Strip.

Arguments and Analysis

‘Stalled Reform in Egyptian Journalist Syndicate: A Sign of Larger Media Malaise’ (Miriam Berger, Atlantic Council)

“When the 2011 revolution broke out, the Egyptian Journalist Syndicate (EJS) stayed silent and kept its doors shut. The only constitutionally-allowed professional body for journalists did not condemn attacks on media or intervene to help those reporting in the street. In the euphoric and chaotic months that followed, many journalists rallied behind long-standing calls for reform to the highly politicized body’s financial, membership, and legal structures. Now the EJS, they argued, could finally fight for the interests of journalists — not that of the state. But old-time politics continued to reign.

Four years later, the EJS finds itself, in many ways, back where it began: Bankrupt and financially dependent on the state, and too politicized to be able to effectively put up a sustained fight for journalists’ rights. But now, amid a crackdown on opposition news and views, critics says that the EJS is far too entrenched within this problematic political climate to be a real force for digital and political change. And the overall sidelining, silencing, and co-opting of journalists obviously does not bode well for the prospects of press freedom — and much-needed institutional reforms of Egypt’s media to back it up — going forward.”

‘Experts cast doubt on Spiegel claim of Syrian nuclear facility’ (Nicholas Blanford, The Christian Science Monitor)

“‘The story is perplexing… so far we do not see anything that is distinctively nuclear,’ says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security which has conducted detailed satellite imagery analyses of suspected nuclear sites in the Middle East.

Although Der Spiegel describes the facility as ‘secret,’ Western intelligence agencies have been aware of its existence for several years. It has been visible on the Google Earth portal for three years and was described as a possible Scud ballistic missile storage facility in an August 2012 article in Jane’s Intelligence Review, a British monthly specializing in security affairs.”

‘Kurds’ Big Year’ (Micha’el Tanchum, Foreign Affairs)

“These near-optimal conditions will not last long—six months at most. The series of peshmerga victories over ISIS in the Kurdish areas of Makhmur, Zumar, and, most recently, Sinjar mean that the KRG now exerts effective control over these disputed territories with the imprimatur of U.S. and NATO assistance. But once the threat of ISIS in Iraq recedes and the West’s focus shifts exclusively to Syria, the KRG may come under increasing pressure to postpone the referendum. However, if the Kurds were to vote for independence within the next few months, they can do so without worrying that Western powers might counter them by reducing their defense support; the United States and its NATO allies fear that any stand down would allow ISIS to resurge or Iranian-backed Shia militias to advance. The Iranian military presence in Jalawla—an area adjacent to the Iranian border and controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the rival to Barzani’s KDP—further incentivizes Barzani to hold the referendum soon since a Kurdish vote for independence would pressure the PUK to distance itself from Iran.

The referendum must also occur before the June 2015 Turkish parliamentary elections because Barzani is unlikely to have more leverage over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan than he has now.”

— Mary Casey-Baker

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