Torture and Abuse in Egypt: The North Carolina Connection

[JohnyCanuck]

News that after five days of protests Omar Suleiman has been named vice president of Egypt is a reminder that the abuses that drove the people into the streets there had too much assistance from America, including right here in my home of North Carolina.

According to journalist Stephen Grey, Suleiman was the Egyptian conduit for the US extraordinary rendition flights closely linked to torture. Many of those flights took off from an airport in Johnston County, NC, less than an hour from my home in Durham. Grey’s book Ghost Plane starts with the journey of one such Johnston County flight that led to the rendition and torture of two Egyptian men, one of who was later released without ever being charged with a crime.

Grey writes that Suleiman approved these flights, part of a system of torture that Amnesty International calls systematic. “Egypt then came in for much criticism,” Grey writes. “Its record both on human rights and on repressing democracy was lambasted annually by both Congress and the State Department. But in secret, men like Omar Suleiman … did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do themselves.”

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/tag/egypt/?msource=W1101EA&tr=y&auid=7696108

[loudsue]

1. That's not 20 miles from my home in North Carolina

I don't think Egypt wants this dude.