Maikel Nabil slams Egyptian military regime as the enemy

[Bernkastel]

From the Guardian. I wish things were improving in Egypt. But, of course, they are not. Here's the new boss, same as the old boss, I suppose.

With his angry and immediate denunciation of the Egyptian military, Maikel Nabil became an early critic of the country's new rulers at a time when they were at the peak of their popularity, following the fall of Hosni Mubarak. But it was not long before they were knocking at his door.

He subsequently spent 302 days behind bars before being released on the eve of the first anniversary of the 25 January revolution, 80 days of which he spent on a hunger strike. This weekend, he spoke of his ordeal and revealed that he remains an unabashed critic of the military junta. "We have one enemy, the military regime and its political dictatorship … It is imperative that we bring down the … military regime, and that there be a complete separation between the military and political activity." He also stressed the importance of "defending the prisoners of the revolution … we cannot forget them".

At a press conference on Saturday, Nabil recounted how he was kept in a tiny cell with a lightbulb switched on and off at one-minute intervals, in a bid to affect his psychological state, he believed. He also said that he was sprayed by an unknown substance while blindfolded a day before his interrogation, which made him groggy and unfocused during questioning.

Nabil said that he was forced to watch other prisoners being stripped and beaten. Yet he says he was not bowed by his experience and remains fiercely critical of the military, to the extent that he refuses to accept his pardon because he is adamant he should not have been tried in the first place.

Nabil's case was divisive among those who formed the opposition to Mubarak, and later the military rulers who replaced the president. The first person to be tried and sentenced for his views after the revolution, he was a Coptic Christian who vehemently criticised the Coptic Church's docility over the Mubarak regime, and a pacifist who refused military service, which is obligatory in Egypt.

Mainly he was a headache for activists because of his markedly different stance towards Israel. Activists in Egypt tend to be opponents of Israel, but Nabil took a more favourable view. He therefore became emblematic of the protection of free speech – even if you disagreed with his views, as many activists were at pains to point out. It was a blogpost Nabil wrote criticising the military that caused the authorities to come knocking at his door on 28 March 2001. "The army and the people were never one hand," he wrote, an inversion of the chant that used to ring out in Tahrir Square.

In his post, Nabil spoke of how the military were arresting protesters from the day Mubarak deployed them across the country after police forces had collapsed under the weight of anger on the streets. Nabil's premise was that the military was not the saviour it was portraying itself to be, and that they would be little better than the Mubarak regime.

Meanwhilee, on Sunday, the trial began of a doctor accused of carrying out the infamous "virginity tests" on female protesters who were detained in Tahrir square and taken to military prisons.