Tag Archives: Egypt

Rising prices mar prospects of economic revival in Egypt

Egyptian baker in Cairo

By Mohamed Abdellah

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s efforts to relieve a crippling dollar shortage are pushing it towards a sickly combination of rising prices and lower growth, undermining hopes for economic revival after years of political upheaval.

Prices have soared since Egypt devalued its currency by 13 percent in mid-March to end speculation against the pound and ease a dollar shortage that has disrupted trade in a country that relies on imports of everything from food to fuel.

But the black market for dollars has since rebounded, putting Egypt back at square one: under pressure to devalue and spark a new round of price rises just as economic growth slows.

Affordable food is an explosive political issue in Egypt, where tens of millions live a paycheck from hunger and economic discontent has helped unseat two presidents in five years.

Living in a slum built on an abandoned refuse dump in Cairo, Mahmoud Abdallah describes the daily battle to make his family’s income stretch beyond beans and potatoes as core inflation hit a seven-year high above 12 percent in May.

“Fruit? What fruit?” the father of six asks with a bitter laugh. “It’s enough for us to look at fruit in the street.”

Importers say devaluation has made shipments more costly, while the hard currency shortage forces some to pay a premium on the black market where one dollar sells for about 11 pounds. The official rate is 8.8, but banks cannot meet demand.

In an effort to cut imports it blames for excessive dollar demand, Egypt increased customs duties this year. The idea is to nudge consumers toward locally-made substitutes, boosting Egyptian firms and encouraging exports.

But exports fell 13.9 percent in the first half of 2015-16, with manufacturers saying the dollar shortage made it harder to import raw materials. The devaluation means they pay more for those inputs too, so local produce is also more expensive.

“They want to make it more difficult to import things but they are also effectively risking engineering a recession,” said Timothy Kaldas, non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “I don’t envy anyone having to deal with this situation because there are no good solutions.”

Abdallah has struggled to find regular work since the 2011 revolt that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule and was propelled, in part, by anger over economic policies that appeared to benefit the rich and leave everyone else behind.

“The situation is below zero… Every time prices rise, we fall, others fall… the poor are lost,” he told Reuters.

CALLING IN THE ARMY

The dangers are not lost on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who promised to revive the economy after taking power in 2013 and has called in the army to help keep a lid on prices.

Over the past year, army vans have begun roaming the country selling cheap groceries and military outlets have popped up.

“Air Defence Outlet. No to Higher Prices. No to Greedy Merchants,” reads a sign above one such store in Cairo.

Through its barred window, customers call out their orders.

The colonel who manages the shop says the goods are made by military companies primarily to feed troops, but are being sold to consumers to combat price rises he blamed on merchants.

But business people say they cannot offer the same prices as the military, which is exempt from tax and uses conscripts as free labor in its factories and farms.

By offering subsidized goods they cannot compete with, economists say the state is undermining the private sector and increasing reliance on subsidies the state cannot afford and should be scaling back.

“Look at the rise in the price of oil, butter and vegetables and you’ll know why we raised prices,” said Mohamed Abdel Rahman, a bakery owner.

COMPETING FOR CUSTOMERS

At a wagon selling cheap cuts of meat at an open food market in Cairo, a woman buys a bag of cow intestines. Another asks the price of a shin and walks away on hearing the answer.

At another stall, women pick through a pile of rotten tomatoes selling at a discount. A fresher batch, at twice the price, sits untouched.

The month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, is normally busy for food-sellers as families gather for the evening meal. This year, it is more subdued.

“We used to wait for this season,” said a butcher, who declined to give his name. “This was the season when people bought quantities and varieties. Now they just look and leave.”

As people cut back on spending, the slowdown could gather pace, say economists, spelling trouble for a government that needs faster growth to create jobs for a growing population.

Growth slowed to 4.5 percent in the first half of 2015-16 from 5.5 percent a year earlier, robust by Western standards but too slow, say experts, for a population that expanded by 1 million, to 91 million, in the last six months.

Yet rising inflation forced Egypt to hike interest rates by 1 percentage point last week to their highest levels in years.

That makes borrowing, and expansion, more expensive for private sector firms in a country where banks already prefer to invest in high-yield, low-risk government debt.

A plan to introduce Value Added Tax is in the works but has been delayed as policymakers fret over the political repercussions of another round of inflation.

The past two years have already seen the government slash electricity and petrol subsidies, though further cuts were delayed due to declining oil prices. In recent weeks, Egypt has raised price caps on the cheapest generic medicines.

The prospect of more price rises is a nightmare even for middle class Egyptians like civil servant Shadia Abdallah, whose husband is retired and two grown-up sons live at home.

“Our income is fixed but prices are rising,” she says.

Egypt builds new homes to replace crumbling slums

A man shows cracks in walls at his home in Al-Assal, one of the oldest slums in the Shubra district of Cairo, Egypt June 1, 2016.

By Mahmoud Mourad

CAIRO (Reuters) – Bayada Mohamed has left her old slum on a crumbling cliffside and moved into a new flat in a Cairo residential complex, making her among the first to benefit from a government plan to rehouse residents of Egypt’s most dangerous slums.

Like other residents of the Doueyka slum where homes have no running water and a rockslide killed about 130 people in 2008, Bayada’s family has been offered a rental flat in the recently-opened Tahiya Misr development in the Moqattam area, as pictured in this photo essay – http://reut.rs/21hyvjc.

“Where was I and where am I now?” exclaimed Bayada, sitting in her new flat surrounded by new furniture.

There are 351 slums deemed unsafe in Egypt, most of them in the sprawling capital where the poorest have built ramshackle homes that lack basic amenities such as mains sewage and water. Some 850,000 people are believed to live in dangerous slums.

Building collapses are common in Cairo, home to some 20 million people, and the shortage of affordable housing is so acute that 1.5 to 2 million are believed to live in tombs in an area known as the City of the Dead.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi promised last month to move all those living in unsafe slums to new flats over the next three years in an ambitious project expected to cost about 14 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.58 billion).

The first two phases of Tahya Misr, which is dedicated to rehousing slumdwellers, were completed in 11 months and comprise 12,000 flats. The third phase opens in 2017, bringing the number of flats to 20,000. The completed complex will house 100,000.

Government efforts to eradicate the worst slums come as Sisi faces growing pressure to revive the economy and avoid the kind of protests that toppled two presidents in the last five years.

But rising prices are eroding living standards in a country where tens of millions rely on state-subsidised food and complicating efforts to rid Egypt of its slums.

MORE SLUMS

Not all slum residents have been as enthusiastic as Bayada about leaving behind their communities and seeing their old homes demolished.

“Most of the residents of these areas wish to be in areas close to where they are actually living now and this for us is a problem,” Sisi said at the recent opening of a low-income housing project in the Madinat Badr area of Cairo.

While it evacuates dangerous areas, the government is upgrading other informal settlements, connecting them to basic services and paving roads.

But many residents are disappointed with the upgrades.

Magdi Mahmoud, a factory worker who lives with his family in the informal settlement of Abu Dahruj in southern Cairo, said the work should have stretched to schools and clinics.

“The improvements are not bad but the important thing is people look after them,” he said.

And on Cairo’s dusty and desolate fringes, the city’s poorest are building more illegal homes on land they do not own.

As the Tahya Misr development nears completion, Ahmed, a vegetable seller, is working with neighbors to complete a new slum near Arab al Barawi, an older informal settlement in southern Cairo, after struggling to afford the rent there.

His new house is built with scavenged materials.

“Thank God, today he blessed us with a bit of wood that was left on the street … to roof my house,” Ahmed said.

(Writing by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Egypt Muslims attack Christian woman, burn houses after affair rumor

CAIRO (Reuters) – Hundreds of Muslims have set fire to homes of Christians in southern Egypt and stripped a 70-year-old woman naked after rumors her Christian son had an affair with a Muslim woman, the local church and witnesses said.

The Christian man fled with his wife and children on May 19, said Ishak Ibrahim at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. His parents went to the police, fearing for their lives.

The next day, around 300 Muslim men set fire to and looted their house in the southern province of Minya and stripped the mother naked out on the street. They also set fire to and looted six other houses, eyewitnesses told Reuters.

“They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying,” the woman, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi condemned the attack in a statement on Thursday and ordered authorities to bring those behind it to justice. He also ordered local authorities and the military to rebuild all damaged properties within a month at state expense.

Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II called for calm and restraint in a statement on Thursday. He said he was pursuing the matter with Egyptian officials and that he had spoken to the woman and all those whose homes were attacked.

The woman accuses three Muslim men of stripping her and dragging her in front of her house, her lawyer Ehab Ramzi told Reuters.

Security sources said police arrested five men in connection with the incident and the public prosecutor had ordered their detention and the arrest of 18 others.

Ten members of parliament put forward a motion to cross-examine Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar over the incident.

Orthodox Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s biggest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination under successive Egyptian leaders.

(Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah and Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

French, Italian firms to help search for EgyptAir black boxes

Recovered debris of the EgyptAir jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea are seen in this still image taken from video

By Ahmed Aboulenein

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt is taking on two companies, one French and one Italian, to help search for the black boxes of an EgyptAir plane that crashed in deep water in the Mediterranean Sea, the airline’s chairman said on Wednesday

EgyptAir flight 804 crashed on May 19 with 66 people on board including 30 Egyptians and 15 from France, and nearly a week later investigators have no clear picture of the plane’s final moments.

EgyptAir chairman Safwat Musallam did not name the companies involved, but he told a news conference they were able to carry out searches at a depth of 3,000 meters.

The plane and its black box recorders, which could explain what brought down the Paris-to-Cairo flight as it entered Egyptian air space, have not been located.

The black boxes are believed to be lying in up to 3,000 meters of water, on the edge of the range for hearing and locating signals emitted by the boxes.

Maritime search experts say this means acoustic hydrophones must be towed in the water at depths of up to 2,000 meters in order to have the best chance of picking up the signals.

Until recently, aviation sources say, the US Navy or its private contractor Phoenix International were considered among the only sources for equipment needed to search on the correct frequency for black box pingers at such depths.

The US Navy said on Tuesday it had not been asked for help.

Batteries powering the signals sent from the black boxes typically last only 30 days, but the airline’s deputy chairman Ahmed Adel said the search would continue beyond then if necessary, using other means to locate the recorders.

“There are many examples in similar air accidents when 30 days passed without finding the box yet … these planes’ black boxes were found,” he said.

‘PLANE’S MACHINES WERE SAFE’

Musallam reiterated earlier comments from sources within the Egyptian investigation committee who said that the jet had shown no sign of technical problems before taking off from Paris.

He said the Airbus 320 was given a regular check by an Egyptian engineer and two Egyptian technicians at Paris airport.

“The engineer and the pilot both signed the Aircraft Technical Log which stated that the check found that all the plane’s machines were safe,” he said.

The investigation sources said the plane disappeared off radar screens less than a minute after entering Egyptian airspace and – contrary to reports from Greece – there was no sign that it had swerved sharply before crashing.

The crew did not make contact with Egyptian air traffic control, they said.

With no flight recorders to check and only fragmentary data from a handful of fault messages registering smoke in the plane in the minutes before it crashed, investigators are also looking to debris and body parts for clues.

One Egyptian forensics official said the small amount of human remains recovered pointed to an explosion on board though no trace of explosives had been detected.

But Hisham Abdelhamid, head of Egypt’s forensics authority, said this assessment was “mere assumptions” and that it was too early to draw conclusions.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Tim Hepher in Paris; Editing by Dominic Evans and Richard Balmforth)

Egypt sends robot submarine to help plane crash search

Relatives of the Christian victims of the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 react and cry during an absentee funeral mass at the main Cathedral in Cairo

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Amina Ismail

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt has sent a robot submarine to join the hunt for an EgyptAir plane which crashed in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people on board, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday.

Ships and planes scouring the sea north of Alexandria have found body parts, personal belongings and debris from the Airbus 320, but are still trying to locate the black box recorders that could shed light on the cause of Thursday’s crash.

Sisi said that underwater equipment from Egypt’s offshore oil industry was being brought in to help the search.

“They have a submarine that can reach 3,000 meters under water,” he said in a televised speech. “It moved today in the direction of the plane crash site because we are working hard to salvage the black boxes.”

An oil ministry source said Sisi was referring to a robot submarine used mostly to maintain offshore oil rigs. It was not clear whether the vessel would be able to help locate the black boxes, or would be used in later stages of the operation.

Air crash investigation experts say the search teams have around 30 days to listen for pings sent out once every second from beacons attached to the two black boxes. At this stage of the search they would typically use acoustic hydrophones, bringing in more advanced robots later to scan the seabed and retrieve any objects once they have been found.

Separately, the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet said one of its patrol aircraft supporting the search had spotted more than 100 pieces of debris positively identified as having come from an aircraft, and passed the data to the Egyptian Navy.

EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo vanished off radar screens early on Thursday as it entered Egyptian airspace over the Mediterranean. The 10 crew and 56 passengers included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals.

French investigators say that the plane sent a series of warnings indicating that smoke had been detected on board shortly before it disappeared.

The signals did not indicate what caused the smoke or fire, and aviation experts have not ruled out either deliberate sabotage or a technical fault, but they offered early clues as to what unfolded in the moments before the crash.

“Until now all scenarios are possible,” Sisi said in his first public remarks on the crash. “So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario.”

The crash was the third blow since October to hit Egypt’s travel industry, still reeling from political unrest following the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

A suspected Islamic State bombing brought down a Russian airliner after it took off from Sharm al-Sheikh airport in late October, killing all 224 people on board, and an EgyptAir plane was hijacked in March by a man wearing a fake suicide belt.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Sharm al-Sheikh bombing within hours but a purported statement from the group’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, distributed on Saturday, made no mention of the crash.

ANGUISH OF RELATIVES

EgyptAir has told relatives of the victims that recovering and identifying bodies from the sea could take weeks, adding to the pain and uncertainty of grieving families.

Samar Ezzedine, 27 years old and newly wed, was one of the cabin crew on flight 804. Her mother Amal has sat in the lobby of a hotel overlooking Cairo Airport, still waiting for her daughter to come back.

“She is missing, who hosts a funeral for a missing person?” she murmured.

Samar’s aunt, Mona, said Amal was reluctant to go home or even move away from the hotel door. “She doesn’t want to believe it … I told her to switch off her phone, but she said: What if Samar calls?”

An EgyptAir union appealed to Sisi to allow death certificates to be issued for the victims, to avoid the usual five-year delay in the case of missing people which leaves relatives in a legal limbo, including over pensions.

In his speech on Sunday, Sisi said the investigation would not be over quickly, but promised it would be transparent.

“This could take a long time but no one can hide these things. As soon as the results are out, people will be informed,” he told ministers and parliamentarians in the port city of Damietta.

The October crash devastated Egyptian tourism, a main source of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people.

Tourism revenue in the first three months of the year plunged by two thirds to $500 million from a year earlier, and the latest incident could crush hopes for a swift recovery.

Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed said Egypt faced a huge challenge winning back visitors. “The efforts that we need to put are maybe 10 times what we planned to put in place but we need to focus on our ability to drive business back to Egypt to change the image of Egypt,” he told Reuters.

“What we need to understand is this is an incident that could have taken place anywhere. Aviation incidents happen, unfortunately.”

(Additional reporting by Lin Noueihed, Abdelnasser Aboelfadl and Eric Knecht in Cairo, Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Tom Heneghan, Jane Merriman and Kevin Liffey)

Egypt finds human remains and belongings from plane crash at sea

Relatives of the victims of the missing EgyptAir flight MS804 hold an absentee funeral prayer in a mosque nearby Cairo airport, in Cairo

By Ahmed Aboulenein

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt said on Friday its navy had found human remains, wreckage and the personal belongings of passengers floating in the Mediterranean, confirmation that an EgyptAir jet had plunged into the sea with 66 people on board.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi offered condolences for those on board, amounting to Egypt’s official acknowledgement of their deaths, although there was still no explanation of why the Airbus had crashed.

“The Egyptian navy was able to retrieve more debris from the plane, some of the passengers’ belongings, human remains, and plane seats,” the Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.

The navy was searching an area about 290 km (180 miles) north of the port city of Alexandria, just south of where the signal from the plane was lost early on Thursday.

There was no sign of the bulk of the wreckage, or of a location signal from the “black box” flight recorders.

EgyptAir Chairman Safwat Moslem told state television that the current radius of the search zone was 40 miles (64 km), giving an area of 5,000 sq miles (13,000 sq km), but that it would be expanded as necessary.

A European satellite spotted a 2 km-long oil slick in the Mediterranean, about 40 km southeast of the aircraft’s last known position, the European Space Agency said.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said that it was too early to rule out any cause for the crash. The aviation minister said a terrorist attack was more likely than a technical failure.

Although suspicion pointed to Islamist militants who blew up another airliner over Egypt seven months ago, no group had claimed responsibility more than 36 hours after the disappearance of flight MS804, an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo.

Jihadists have been fighting Egypt’s government since Sisi toppled an elected Islamist leader in 2013. In October, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian airliner that exploded after taking off from an Egyptian tourist resort. Russian investigators blamed a bomb smuggled on board.

TOURISM DEVASTATED

That crash devastated Egypt’s tourist industry, one of the main sources of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people, and another similar attack would crush hopes of it recovering.

Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo early on Friday, airport sources said.

Officials from a number of U.S. agencies told Reuters that a U.S. review of satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion. They said the United States had not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.

The plane vanished just as it was moving from Greek to Egyptian airspace control. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said it had swerved radically and plunged from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before vanishing from Greek radar screens.

Ultra-hardline Islamists have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

Khaled al-Gameel, head of crew at EgyptAir, said the pilot, Mahamed Saeed Ali Shouqair, had 15 years’ experience and was in charge of training and mentoring younger pilots.

“He comes from a pilot family; his uncle was a high-ranking pilot at EgyptAir and his cousin is also a pilot,” Gameel said. “He was very popular and was known for taking it upon himself to settle disputes any two colleagues were having.”

A Facebook page that appeared to be Shouqair’s showed no signs of Islamist sympathies. It included criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, repostings of articles supporting President Sisi and pictures of Shouqair wearing aviator sunglasses.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, and 10 crew. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries. The plane had made scheduled flights to Tunisia and Eritrea on Wednesday before arriving in Paris from Cairo.

(Writing by Lincoln Feast, Peter Graff and Kevin Liffey; editing by David Stamp and Peter Millership)

Egypt finds belongings, debris from plane crash at sea

Pilots of an Egyptian military plane take part in a search operation for the EgyptAir plane that disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea

By Ahmed Aboulenein

CAIRO (Reuters) – The Egyptian navy said on Friday it had found the personal belongings of passengers and other debris floating in the Mediterranean, confirmation that an EgyptAir jet had plunged into the sea with 66 people on board.

The military said it had found the debris about 290 km (180 miles) north of the port city of Alexandria and was searching for the plane’s black box flight recorders.

Egypt’s President Adbel Fattah al-Sisi offered condolences for those on board, amounting to Cairo’s official acknowledgement of their deaths.

The defense minister of Greece, which has also been scouring the Mediterranean, said Egyptian authorities had found a body part, luggage and a seat in the sea just south of where the signal from the plane was lost.

Although suspicion pointed to Islamist militants who blew up another airliner over Egypt just seven months ago, no group had claimed responsibility more than 24 hours after the disappearance of flight MS804, an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo.

Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo early on Friday to help investigate the fate of the missing plane, airport sources said.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said on Thursday that it was too early to rule out any explanation for the disaster. The country’s aviation minister said a terrorist attack was more likely than a technical failure.

Friday’s announcement that debris had been found followed earlier confusion about whether wreckage had been located. Greek searchers found some material on Thursday, but the airline later said this was not from its plane.

SUSPICION FALLS ON MILITANTS

While there was no official explanation of the cause of the crash, suspicion fell on the militants who have been fighting against Egypt’s government since Sisi toppled an elected Islamist leader in 2013. In October, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian jetliner that exploded after taking off from an Egyptian tourist resort. Russian investigators blamed a bomb smuggled on board.

Last year’s crash devastated Egypt’s tourist industry, one of the main sources of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people, and another similar attack would crush hopes of it recovering.

While most governments were cautious about jumping to conclusions, U.S. Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, tweeted swiftly after the plane’s disappearance: “Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant?”

Later in the day, his likely Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, also said it appeared to be an act of terrorism, although she said an investigation would have to determine the details.

Officials from a number of U.S. agencies told Reuters that a U.S. review of satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion. They said the United States had not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.

Amid uncertainty about what brought down the plane, Los Angeles International Airport became the first major U.S. air transportation hub to say it was stepping up security measures.

“LIVES ARE SO CHEAP”

The plane vanished just as it was exiting air space controlled by Greece for air space controlled by Egypt. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the Airbus swerved radically and plunged from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before vanishing from Greek radar screens.

According to Greece’s civil aviation chief, calls from Greek air traffic controllers to MS804 went unanswered just before it left Greek airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards.

There was no official indication of a possible cause, whether technical failure, human error or sabotage.

Ultra-hardline Islamists have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries. A320s normally seat 150 people. The plane had made scheduled flights to Tunisia and Eritrea on Wednesday before arriving in Paris from Cairo.

At Cairo airport, a man sat on a brown leather couch crying with his hands covering his face on Thursday. “How long will Egypt live if human lives are so cheap?” he said.

The mother of a flight attendant rushed in tears out of the VIP hall where families waited. She said the last time her daughter called her was Wednesday night. “They haven’t told us anything,” she said.

(Writing by Lincoln Feast and Peter Graff; editing by David Stamp and Peter Millership)

Protesters demand fall of Egypt’s government over islands deal

Egyptian Protests April 2015

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Eric Knecht

CAIRO (Reuters) – Thousands of Egyptian protesters angered by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia called on Friday for the downfall of the government, chanting a powerful slogan used in a 2011 uprising.

Sisi, who once enjoyed widespread support, has faced mounting criticism in recent months, including over his management of the economy.

“The people want the downfall of the regime,” the protesters yelled outside the Cairo press syndicate, using the same phrase heard during the 2011 revolt against president Hosni Mubarak who later stepped down.

They also chanted: “Sisi Mubarak”, “We don’t want you, leave” and “We own the land and you are agents who sold our land.”

Sisi’s government announced last week the signing of a maritime demarcation accord that put the uninhabited Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which lie between Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, in Saudi waters, prompting an outcry in Egyptian newspapers and on social media.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Saudi Arabia had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.

In other parts of Cairo, police fired tear gas at protesters, security sources said.

A Reuters witness said a crowd was dispersed and riot police had taken control of an area outside a mosque in the Mohandiseen district of the capital. Four people were arrested, the security sources said.

Tear gas was also fired in the Giza area outside Cairo, dispersing about 200 people, security sources said.

Critics say the government has mishandled a series of crises from an investigation into the torture and killing of an Italian student in Cairo to a bomb that brought down a Russian airliner in the Sinai last October.

PATIENCE WITH SISI FADING

Many Egyptians, eager for an end to the turmoil triggered by the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, enthusiastically welcomed Sisi when he seized power from the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests.

As military chief, Sisi toppled Egypt’s first freely elected leader, and then went on to become president on promises of stability after launching the fiercest crackdown on dissent in modern Egypt’s history.

Egyptians turned a blind eye as Islamists and other opponents of the government were rounded up, swelling prisons to about 40,000 political detainees, according to estimates by human rights groups.

But a growing number of Egyptians are losing patience over corruption, poverty and unemployment, the same issues which led to Mubarak’s downfall, while Sisi has appeared increasingly authoritarian in televised speeches.

“We want the downfall of regime. We have forced disappearances, all the youth are in jail. I just got out of jail a year ago after two years inside,” said Abdelrahman Abdellatif, 29, an air conditioning engineer, at the press syndicate demonstration.

“The youth of the revolution are still here. We are not gone. We want stability but that doesn’t mean sell our land and kill our youth. We are experiencing unprecedented fascism and dictatorship.”

There were also Sisi supporters, such as a woman with a shirt with an image of the former military intelligence chief on it.

In Alexandria, around 500 people gathered near a railway station. Meanwhile 300 Sisi supporters holding up photographs of him protested outside a mosque in the port city.

Calls for protests have gathered thousands of supporters on Facebook, including from the outlawed Brotherhood, which accused Sisi of staging a coup when it was ousted and rolling back freedoms won after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians protested five years ago in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against Mubarak.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Dominic Evans)

EgyptAir hijack ends with passengers freed unharmed, suspect arrested

By Yiannis Kourtoglou and Nadia El Gowely

LARNACA, Cyprus/CAIRO (Reuters) – An EgyptAir plane flying from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus on Tuesday but the passengers and crew were freed unharmed and the hijacker, whose motives remained a mystery, was arrested after giving himself up.

Eighty-one people, including 21 foreigners and 15 crew, had been onboard the Airbus 320 flight when it took off, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.

Conflicting theories emerged about the hijacker’s motives, with Cypriot officials saying early on the incident did not appear related to terrorism but the Cypriot state broadcaster saying he had demanded the release of women prisoners in Egypt.

After the aircraft landed at Larnaca airport, negotiations began and everyone onboard was freed except three passengers and four crew, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fethy said.

Soon after his comments, Cypriot television footage showed several people leaving the plane via the stairs and another man climbing out of the cockpit window and running off.

The hijacker then surrendered to authorities.

“Its over,” the Cypriot foreign ministry said in a tweet.

Speaking to reporters after the crisis ended, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said the hijacker was an Egyptian national but that his motives remained unclear.

“At some moments he asked to meet with a representative of the European Union and at other points he asked to go to another airport but there was nothing specific,” he said, adding that the man would now be questioned to ascertain his motives.

Cypriot foreign ministry official Alexandros Zenon told reporters during the crisis that the hijacker appeared to be “unstable”.

Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane’s pilot, Omar al-Gammal, had informed authorities that he was threatened by a passenger who claimed to be wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced him to divert the plane to Larnaca.

Photographs shown on Egyptian state television showed a middle-aged man on a plane wearing glasses and displaying a white belt with bulging pockets and protruding wires.

Fethy, the Egyptian minister, said authorities suspected the suicide belt was not genuine but treated the incident as serious to ensure the safety of all those on board.

“Our passengers are all well and the crew is all well… We cannot say this was a terrorist act… he was not a professional,” Fethy told reporters after the incident.

In the midst of the crisis, witnesses said the hijacker had thrown a letter on the apron in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered to his ex-wife, who is Cypriot.

But the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) said the hijacker had asked for the release of women prisoners in Egypt, suggesting a political motive.

EgyptAir also delayed a New York-bound flight from Cairo onto which some passengers of the hijacked plane had been due to connect. Fethy said it was delayed partly due to a technical issue but partly as a precaution.

The plane remained on the tarmac at Larnaca throughout the morning while Cypriot security forces took up positions around the scene.

EGYPT’S IMAGE

While the reasons for the hijacking were not entirely clear, the incident will deal another blow to Egypt’s tourism industry and hurt efforts to revive an economy hammered by political unrest following the 2011 uprising.

The sector, a main source of hard currency for the import-dependent county, was already reeling from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said the Russian plane was brought down by a terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board, killing all 224 people on board.

The incident has raised renewed questions over airport security in Egypt, though it was not clear whether the hijacker was even armed. Ismail said stringent measures were in place.

There was also some confusion over the identity of the hijacker. Egypt’s official state news agency MENA initially named him as Egyptian national Ibrahim Samaha but later said the hijacker was called Seif Eldin Mustafa.

The Cypriot Foreign Affairs Ministry also identified the hijacker as Mustafa.

Passengers on the plane included eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, an Italian, a Syrian and French national, the Civil Aviation Ministry.

Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its proximity to the Middle East.

A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner at Larnaca airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.

In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait in a 16-day siege had a stopover in Larnaca, where two hostages were killed.

Egypt said it would send a plane to Cyprus to pick up stranded passengers, some of whom had been traveling to Cairo for connecting flights abroad.

(Additionaly reporting by Michele Kambas in Athens and Mostafa Hashem, Ahmed Mohammed Hassan, Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed in Cairo, Writing by Lin Noueihed, Editing by Michael Georgy and Angus MacSwan)

Security fears overshadow world’s biggest travel fair

BERLIN (Reuters) – Security fears are on everybody’s lips at the ITB travel trade fair in Berlin this year as a battered tourist industry seeks to reassure travelers and tour operators that they need not shy away from booking summer holidays for this year.

Attacks in tourist hotspots like a Tunisian beach resort and the city of Paris over the past year have rattled travelers’ confidence, sending bookings for Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt plummeting and heralding a slowdown in demand for international travel.

“People have money to spend, but there’s a strong negative impact from the geopolitical situation. People fear attacks,” Roy Scheerder, commercial director at low cost Dutch airline Transavia, told Reuters at ITB.

Airlines, tour operators, hoteliers and travel search companies at the fair said they had seen more caution than usual in bookings at the start of the year, often a popular time for people to book trips.

A survey by consultancy IPK International projected that growth in the number of international trips taken would slow to 3 percent this year, down from 4.6 percent in 2015.

Rolf Freitag, founder of IPK, said security fears had knocked off about 1.5 percentage points from the expected growth this year. Of 50,000 people in 42 countries surveyed at the start of February, 15 percent said they would either not travel or holiday in their home country this year.

Hotel groups like Marriott International and Best Western expressed concern over tourist bookings for Paris after November’s attacks on the French capital, which may have a knock-on effect on other destinations.

“It has a ripple effect. If you think about someone traveling from the United States to Paris, Paris was not the only city they would visit, they would also go to other parts of France or Europe, and that has been curtailed,” Best Western CEO David Kong told Reuters.

The beneficiaries are destinations perceived to carry a smaller risk of becoming the target of attacks.

“The really hot markets are anywhere that’s safe. Spain is on fire for this summer. Italy is very strong,” Darren Huston, chief executive of Priceline Group and its subsidiary Booking.com, told Reuters.

Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling, for instance, has added more capacity to Spanish destinations from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland to keep up with demand, though it highlighted that hotel space was running out.

Destinations in North America and the Caribbean are seeing increased demand, while search firm Kayak said Germans were more interested in hotels in their own country this year.

Some in the industry are clinging to hope that tourists will still travel this summer but are holding off on firm bookings longer than usual due to the uncertain security outlook.

“Past experience has shown us that a country that is serious about tourism and has built an infrastructure always bounces back,” Taleb Rifai, the head of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), told Reuters in an interview.

“Look at Egypt. It has been up and down for the last 10 years. Every time it comes back stronger than before,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Maushagen and Tina Bellon; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)