CAIRO: Accusations of sexual misconduct directed at two prominent human rights lawyers in Egypt — one of them a former presidential hopeful — have roiled the country’s beleaguered civil society, which is already under unrelenting pressure from authorities.
The allegations, directed at former presidential hopeful Khaled Ali and another lawyer, were made in a private email sent by a woman in October that has since been widely shared on social media. Many have cast it as part of the global #MeToo campaign against sexual assault and misconduct, while accusing the activist community of closing ranks to avoid embarrassment.
The woman, currently living in Europe, has declined to give media interviews and has not filed a complaint with authorities. The Associated Press does not publicly identify victims of sexual assault and is not naming the second lawyer because no formal complaint has been made against him.
In the email, the woman alleged that Ali invited her to his downtown Cairo office in 2015 after other employees had gone home. The woman, who had recently quit her job at the rights organization founded and led by Ali, said he offered her a beer before he left to shower next door. When he came back, he asked her personal questions about two of her past relationships, she said.
“I finish the beer and tell him I need to leave because I have an appointment in the morning,” she recounted in the email. “He tries to convince me to stay over and that it’s getting late. I tell him no, I prefer to go,” she wrote. She said she left without further incident.
She said the other lawyer, who specializes in women’s rights, had suggested she spend the night at his place after an evening of heavy drinking at a downtown bar with friends in 2014. She said she took him up on the offer because she was drunk, and that he raped her that night.
She said she has been in therapy to deal with the trauma, and that her email was meant as a warning to women employed by rights groups. Two of her friends, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve her privacy, said she told them she decided to break her silence when she learned that Ali planned to run for president.
The lawyer denied the rape allegation in a phone interview with the AP, saying he had “consensual” sex with the woman. In the email, she acknowledged having consensual sex with him after the alleged rape.
Ali responded to the accusations leveled against himself in a Facebook post on Feb. 19, calling them “extremely shocking and surprising.” He said he had ordered his campaign and his Bread and Freedom party to investigate the allegations shortly after they surfaced and had refrained from commenting publicly until the investigation was complete.
The three-person panel of supporters cleared Ali of any wrongdoing but reprimanded him for mixing his personal life with his political work. The accuser questioned the panel’s objectivity and refused to cooperate with it.
“The mere thought that she entertains such thoughts about me and wrote an email reflecting them leaves me with no choice but to offer her an apology for the pain she suffered,” he wrote. “Although the findings of the investigation are in my favor, I must still take some of the blame.”
Ali resigned from his leadership of the party, as well as the rights group he founded. Several telephone calls and messages to Ali seeking comment went unanswered.
Supporters applauded his response, calling it a rare show of accountability in a conservative society where sexual harassment is rampant and sex crimes are rarely acknowledged or prosecuted.
Others say his campaign dodged the allegations while trying to get him on the ballot. Ali declared his intention to run for president in November but quit in January, citing intimidation by authorities. The panel released a summary of its findings after he abandoned his run.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is widely expected to win re-election in the March 26-28 vote after several potential candidates withdrew or were arrested. The only other candidate to make the ballot is a little-known politician who supports Sisi.
Egypt’s civil society, which played a key role in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, has been the target of a sweeping crackdown since Sisi led the military overthrow of an elected Islamist president in 2013.
Several prominent activists have been arrested, while others have been banned from travel or had their assets frozen. Their organizations have been subject to draconian restrictions, and pro-government media routinely portray them as depraved agents of hostile foreign powers.
But critics within the rights community say none of that excuses the response to the allegations against Ali.
The “Girls’ Revolution,” a women’s rights group, issued a statement saying Ali’s supporters had not acted quickly enough.
“Although the leadership of the party was informed of the email in November, the campaign went on despite the suspected abuse,” it said.
More than 100 activists, including many women, signed a declaration saying the panel, which was appointed in December, “mirrored the state’s criminal justice system, complete with its deficiencies (and) lack of safety for those who complain.”
It said the handling of the case, like that of allegations against other public figures, was dominated by the “spirit of the clique” — a desire to shield prominent individuals from criticism and protect the international image of civil society groups, many of which received support from abroad before the latest crackdown.
Several prominent women’s rights activists declined to comment on the case.
But Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian writer and activist based in New York, said the response from Ali’s supporters shows that “their revolution is not genuine because the essence of the things we are struggling against remain inside them.”
“The woman who wrote the email deserves much more justice than she has received so far,” she said.
Egypt’s embattled activists face a #MeToo reckoning
Egypt’s embattled activists face a #MeToo reckoning
Palestinian health ministry in Gaza Strip says war toll at 47,306
- Health ministry said war had also left 111,483 people wounded
GAZA STRIP: The Palestinian health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday the death toll from the war with Israel had reached 47,306, with numbers rising in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies are found under the rubble.
The ministry said hospitals in the Gaza Strip had received 23 bodies in the past 72 hours — 14 “recovered from under the rubble,” five who “succumbed to their injuries” from earlier in the war, and four new fatalities.
It did not specify how the new fatalities occurred.
The ministry said the war had also left 111,483 people wounded.
Some Gazans have died from wounds inflicted before the ceasefire, with the health system in the Palestinian territory largely destroyed by more than 15 months of fighting and bombardment.
The ministry again reiterated its appeal for Gazans to submit information about dead or missing people to help update its records.
The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was sparked by the militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Sudan army chief visits HQ after recapture from paramilitaries
- Army’s recapture of the General Command of the Armed Forces is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman
- Attack on Friday on Saudi Hospital in the besieged North Darfur state capital El-Fasher killed 70 people: WHO
PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the complex, which paramilitaries had encircled since the war erupted in April 2023.
“Our forces are in their best condition,” Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan told army commanders at the reclaimed headquarters close to the city center and airport.
The army’s recapture of the General Command of the Armed Forces is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the Nile’s west bank, nearly a year ago.
In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters, breaking the siege of both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command, just south across the Nile River.
Since the early days of the war, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military had to supply its troops inside the headquarters via airdrops.
Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.
The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.
Earlier this month, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.
The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.
Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.
Particularly in the country’s western Darfur region and in Kordofan in the south, families have been forced to eat grass, animal fodder and peanut shells to survive.
During Sunday prayers in Rome, Pope Francis lamented how the country has become the site of “the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world.”
He called on both sides to end the fighting and urged the international community to “help the belligerents find paths to peace soon.”
Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.
The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, accusing his group of committing genocide.
A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.
Across the country, up to 80 percent of health care facilities have been forced out of service, according to official figures.
A deadly attack late Friday on the Saudi Hospital in the besieged North Darfur state capital El-Fasher killed 70 people and injured 19 others, the World Health Organization said on Sunday.
“At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
In a rare statement addressing the targeting of health care in Sudan, Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack as a “violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”
AFP could not independently verify which of Sudan’s warring sides had launched the attack.
However, local activists reported that the hospital was hit by a drone after the RSF issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the city in advance of an expected offensive.
The WHO chief said that another facility in North Darfur’s Al-Malha, just north of El-Fasher, had also been attacked in recent days.
“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” Ghebreyesus said.
“Above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace,” he added.
Pope Francis says Sudan's war 'most serious humanitarian crisis'
- A drone attack on a hospital in El-Fasher killed at least 70 people
- Pope Francis appeals to warring parties in Sudan to cease hostilities
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis said during Sunday prayers that the horror of the Holocaust can not be “forgotten or denied” as he also highlighted current suffering caused by Sudan’s civil war.
Speaking on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he called on the entire world to “work together to eliminate the scourge of anti-Semitism as well as all forms of religious discrimination and persecution.”
Turning to Sudan, Francis said it was the “most serious humanitarian crisis in the world.”
“I renew my appeal to the warring parties in Sudan to cease hostilities and agree to sit at a negotiating table,” he said at the Sunday Angelus service.
The conflict in Sudan between the army and the Rapid Support Forces militia has triggered a huge humanitarian disaster, killing tens of thousands of people, uprooting more than 12 million and causing widespread starvation in parts of the country.
A drone attack on a Saudi-run hospital in El-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region killed at least 70 people and wounded 19 others, according to the World Health Organization on Sunday.
Israeli fire kills 15 on deadline for Lebanon withdrawal
- Israeli forces opened fire on ‘citizens who were trying to return to their villages’
- The Lebanese army says ‘ready to continue its deployment” as soon as Israel left’
BURJ AL-MULUK, Lebanon: Israeli troops opened fire in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing at least 15 residents and a Lebanese soldier, health officials said as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israel to withdraw.
Israel was all but certain to miss Sunday’s deadline, which is part of a ceasefire agreement that ended its war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group two months ago.
The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period.
That period ends on Sunday.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli forces opened fire on “citizens who were trying to return to their villages,” killing at least 15 and wounding 83.
The ministry’s toll includes a soldier from the Lebanese army, which also announced his death and said Israeli fire had wounded another soldier.
AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people, some flying yellow Hezbollah flags, were trying to get to several villages despite the Israeli military’s continued presence.
“We will return to our villages and the Israeli enemy will leave,” even if it costs lives, said Ali Harb, a 27-year-old trying to go to Kfar Kila.
Residents could also be seen heading on foot and by motorbike toward the devastated border town of Mays Al-Jabal, where Israeli troops are still stationed.
Some held up portraits of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, while women dressed in black carried photos of family members killed in the war.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had issued a message earlier on Sunday to residents of more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon, telling them not to return.
Speaking from the border town of Aita Al-Shaab, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah hailed in a television appearance “the return of residents in spite of the threats and warnings.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the former army chief who took office earlier this month after a two-year vacancy in the post, called on residents to keep a cool head and “trust the Lebanese army,” which he said wanted “to ensure your safe return to your homes and villages.”
On Saturday, the army had said the delay in implementing the agreement was the “result of the procrastination in the withdrawal from the Israeli enemy’s side.”
A joint statement from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission on Sunday acknowledged “that the timelines envisaged in the November Understanding have not been met.”
“As seen tragically this morning, conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages along the Blue Line,” the statement said, referring to the border. It urged residents “to exercise caution.”
Israeli forces have left coastal areas of southern Lebanon, but are still present in areas further east.
The ceasefire deal stipulates that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that the “agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese state,” so the military’s withdrawal would continue beyond the Sunday deadline.
The Lebanese army said it was “ready to continue its deployment” as soon as Israel left.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Sunday for the backers of the ceasefire agreement — a group that includes the United States and France — “to force the Israeli enemy to withdraw.”
Lebanese state media have reported that Israeli forces have carried out demolitions in villages they control.
Aoun spoke on Saturday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron about the “need to oblige Israel to respect the terms of the deal,” adding it must “end its successive violations, including the destruction of border villages.”
Macron’s office said the French president had called on all parties to the ceasefire to honor their commitments as soon as possible.
The fragile truce has generally held, even as the warring sides have repeatedly traded accusations of violations.
The deal ended two months of full-scale war that had followed nearly a year of low-intensity exchanges.
Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire with the Israeli army the day after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Israel’s campaign delivered a series of devastating blows against Hezbollah’s leadership including its longtime chief Nasrallah.
Israeli fire kills 1 as Palestinians are kept out of north Gaza over a ceasefire dispute
- Under the ceasefire, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza on foot
- Israel put the move on hold until Hamas freed a hostage who Israel said was supposed to have been released
DEIR AL-BALAH: A Palestinian man was killed and seven people were wounded by Israeli fire overnight, local health officials said Sunday, as crowds gathered in hopes of returning to the northern Gaza Strip under a fragile week-old ceasefire aimed at winding down the war.
In a separate development, President Donald Trump suggested Saturday that most of Gaza’s population should be at least temporarily resettled elsewhere, including in Egypt and Jordan, in order to “just clean out” the war-ravaged enclave. Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians themselves have previously rejected such a scenario.
Under the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza on foot through the so-called Netzarim corridor bisecting the territory. Israel put the move on hold until Hamas freed a hostage who Israel said was supposed to have been released that day.
The man was shot and two others were wounded late Saturday, according to the Awda Hospital, which received the casualties. Another five Palestinians, including a child, were wounded early Sunday in a separate shooting, the hospital said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has pulled back from several areas of Gaza as part of the ceasefire, which came into force last Sunday, but the military has warned people to stay away from its forces, which are still operating in a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border and in the Netzarim corridor.
Hamas freed four young female Israeli soldiers on Saturday, and Israel released some 200 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks.
But Israel said another hostage, the female civilian Arbel Yehoud, was supposed to have been released as well, and that it would not open the Netzarim corridor until she was freed. It also accused Hamas of failing to provide details on the conditions of the hostages set to be freed in the coming weeks.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar, which mediated the ceasefire, were working to address the dispute.
The ceasefire reached earlier this month after more than a year of negotiations is aimed at ending the 15-month war triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and freeing scores of hostages still held in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Around 90 hostages are still being held in Gaza, and Israeli authorities believe at least a third, and up to half of them, were killed in the initial attack or died in captivity.
The first phase of the ceasefire runs until early March and includes the release of a total of 33 hostages and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The second — and far more difficult — phase, has yet to be negotiated. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war, while Israel has threatened to resume its offensive until Hamas is destroyed.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 people. More than 100 were freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the remains of dozens more, at least three of whom were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces. Seven have been freed since the latest ceasefire began.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Israeli bombardment and ground operations have flattened wide swaths of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of 2.3 million people. Many who have returned to their homes since the ceasefire began have found only mounds of rubble where their neighborhoods once stood.
