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February 14th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda -
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Freelance reporter Austin Mackell was detained on suspicion of inciting unrest.
An Australian journalist who has been freed after being arrested in Egypt says he was accused of spying and denies crossing the line between journalism and activism.
Cairo-based reporter Austin Mackell was on his way to the textile city of Mahalla to interview a prominent union figure when he was arrested.
He says he could hear people being tortured in the cells surrounding his, and that he owes his safety to a prominent union official and local activists who pressured the regime for his release.
Mackell says he was accused of offering money to local youths in order for them to protest in the area.
Egyptian authorities have in the past blamed foreigners for plotting unrest.
“This is the standard line: that the people who are protesting, that the people who are fighting for their rights in any regard, are actually being paid by foreign agents,” he told The World Today.
“This is the line that state TV has run with on a number of occasions in similar cases, and it’s what happened with us as well.”
Mackell denies the accusation and says he was simply in the area to do his job as a journalist.
“On the anniversary of the fall of [Hosni] Mubarak, I was hoping to meet with a man called Kamal al-Fayyumi who is a famous labour organiser in Egypt,” he said.
“I was with a masters student who’s doing his [research] on labour movements in Egypt and my translator and the driver.
“And when we did get there we got out of the taxi and basically had a chance to say hello, and then after that we were almost immediately mobbed by a group of people calling us spies, you know, foreigners, spies.”
‘Torture footage’
Mackell says after his arrest authorities told him he was being held for his own protection, but when he asked to leave he was not allowed.
“Only over time it became clear that this was not the case, that we weren’t being held for protection that we were now the subject of some kind of investigation,” he said.
“We were kept waiting for a long time during which time one of the police officers thought it would be fun to show us mobile phone footage that he had of the army torturing somebody.
“It’s not clear whether he meant that as a means of intimidation or he meant that as actually trying to relieve our boredom, because they seemed to be really enjoying it.”
He says he was moved several times and hundreds of kilometres over two days.
“At first we were kept in an office, in a side office in the police station, but from there we were moved many times, I think six or seven times,” he said.
“We were moved from one police station to another in Mahalla, then to the neighbouring city of Tanta for a ministry of interior building where we were taken.
“Then we were taken to military intelligence in Cairo. From there we were taken back to Tanta … then from there to the second police station we’d been taken to in Mahalla again, then from there to the general prosecutor’s office in Mahalla, and then from there back to the police station where we were actually put in a cell.”
He says he was asked whether he had given money to people as well as questions about his family and his relationship with the translator.
“Nothing was off limits to them. The main thing was they got me to re-tell my story – I must have told it 10 or 15 times,” he said.
“From the way I was treated as opposed to the people I could hear being tortured in the room next to me, one thing was clear: that as a foreigner my rights and the safety of my person is still more valued by the authorities than that of an Egyptian citizen.”
What next?
Mackell believes he knows why he was moved around so much.
“We were being moved to stop activists and advocates and lawyers who we’d contacted via Twitter before our phones were taken from us. We’d put the word out and they were on their way looking for us,” he said.
He says he never got a chance to contact consular officials.
“They said that they had contacted them, but the contact they made was kind of perfunctory and not, probably not – I’m not sure if the consular officials knew exactly where we physically were,” he said.
He says the ordeal has inspired him to keep working.
“I’ve only realised coming out how hard they’ve all been batting for us, so I’ve got a huge amount of gratitude,” he said.
“The fact that the Egyptian activists with all the problems they’re facing… found time to worry about someone like me.”
Mackell has been in Egypt for around a year. He will return to Australia soon to see his family but is unsure what will happen to him after that.
“There’s absolutely no culture of transparency at all. I’ve been told I’ll be deported and then I’ve been told that I won’t.
“There are reports circulating that the charges have been dropped but we’ve also been told that the case is still open.
“It’s an absolute mystery to me what will happen next.”
unrest-conflict-and-war,
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