EGYPT: AYMAN NOUR AT THE END OF HIS ROPE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 008034

SIPDIS

NSC STAFF FOR POUNDS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/17/2015
TAGS: PGOV KDEM EG
SUBJECT: EGYPT: AYMAN NOUR AT THE END OF HIS ROPE


Classified by DCM Stuart E. Jones for reasons 1.4 (b) and
(d).

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Summary
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1. (C) Opposition leader Ayman Nour recently gave poloff a
dramatic account of his current political travails, claiming
the GOE has responded "with ferocious vengeance" to his
strong showing in the September 7 presidential election.
While this is Nour's version of events, and needs to be put
in the context of political maneuvering in advance of the
parliamentary elections, Nour is the leading opposition
figure in Egypt and his charges are likely to be reported
widely in the western media. Nour described to poloff a
"vicious campaign" to destroy him, his reputation, and his
party. According to Nour, the latest of the "dirty tricks"
includes a recording of unknown origin now in circulation
entitled "Ayman Nour's scandal" -- which contains separate
audio recordings purportedly of both Nour and his wife
Gameela, each engaged in lurid conversations with their
respective lovers.


2. (C) Claiming the GOE was bent on kicking him out of
parliament, Nour asserted that State Security was directly
and bluntly intimidating voters in his home district. Nour
also accused the GOE of engineering the emergence of a
parallel Ghad Party -- led by Nour's former friend and
confidante Musa Musa, which has now issued a parallel Ghad
Party newspaper and will apparently field its own
parliamentary candidates under the Ghad Party banner. Nour
believed he may soon be re-arrested and jailed on a new
"trumped up" bribery case. The dispirited Nour confided that
all the stress had taken him near the breaking point, and
openly contemplated withdrawing from politics and/or leaving
Egypt. Though we cannot absolve Nour of any wrongdoing in
his past, we find credible his charges is the target of a
politically motivated campaign to remove him from the stage.
End summary.

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"Dirty Tricks" Campaign Shifting into High Gear
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3. (C) Poloff met for 90 minutes on the evening of October 15
with Ghad Party President Ayman Nour, at the latter's
request. We understand Nour has also been speaking with
western journalists, including the New York Times, which may
soon publish an article detailing his allegations of GOE
persecution. In his meeting with poloff, the normally
confident Nour was uncharacteristically morose. Nour said
that the weeks since the September 7 presidential election
had been the worst in his life. Nour surprised observers in
the presidential election by receiving, according to the
official results, more than 500,000 of the 7 million votes
cast. (Nour claims that he actually received many more votes,
perhaps as many as 22 percent of the vote.) "This result was
extremely painful for the ruling powers," Nour asserted, "now
they are determined to take revenge by destroying my career,
destroying my reputation, and destroying my spirit."


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Re-Arrest, Jailing Imminent?
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4. (C) Nour told poloff that he feared That he will be
re-arrested and returned to jail in a second "trumped up"
case - this time apparently a bribery charge. Nour said he
had received a call from the office of People's Assembly
Speaker Fathy Surour advising him that the Speaker had
received a request from prosecutors that his parliamentary
immunity be lifted and that Surour felt he had no basis to
deny the request. (Note: Nour's immunity was also lifted
hours before his arrest in January. End note.) The
prosecutor's request apparently relates to the case of Ayman
Barakat, a former employee in Nour's law office who was
accused of bribery and fraud. Prosecutors alleged Barakat
paid a poor resident from his village in the Delta to "stand
in" for him in jail. Nour told us that last week he was
informed by the Public Prosecutor's office that he has now
become a target in the investigation -- the "stand-in" is
claiming that Barakat, in setting up the arrangement, was
acting on Nour's orders. (Note: We have no independent
confirmation that Nour will become a defendent in this case.
End note.)


5. (C) Nour insists he has never met and had never heard of
the "stand-in" before the case broke and is extremely
agitated by the prospect of returning to jail. "They are
planning to put me in Abu Za'bal - the worst jail in Egypt,"
he stated, recalling his allegedly brutal handling during his
first arrest in January. "I cannot go back to jail...I
believe they want me in jail on Election Day (November 9),"
he asserted.

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Smut and Sleaze
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6. (C) Nour and his wife (and principal advisor) Gameela
Ismail, who sat in on the meeting with poloff, were also
agitated by a CD of unknown origin entitled "The Scandals of
Ayman Nour," which they said began circulating in Cairo last
week. The CD, which has already been the subject of an
article in the tabloid Al-Midan, contains purported audio
recordings of Nour engaged in a lewd conversation with a
"girfriend" and a second recording, purportedly of Gameela,
engaged in pillow talk with a "lover." Gameela said the CD
was analyzed by a professional audio technician who told her
it had been heavily dubbed. Ayman and Gameela charged that
the CD marked a new low in the GOE's efforts to destroy them,
by invoking sexual innuendo; a particularly devastating
weapon against a woman in an Islamic society.

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Intimidation in Bab Shariya
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7. (C) Nour also claimed that State Security intimidation of
voters in his parliamentary constituency of Bab Shariya, a
working class neighborhood in Central Cairo, had become
increasingly blunt and heavy-handed. The challenger for
Nour's seat in the district, the NDP's Yahya Wahdani, has a
"day job" as a senior officer in the State Security service.
According to Nour, many of the local "pillars" of his
constituency, neighborhood businessmen and community leaders,
had been summoned to State Security and warned to withdraw
their support for Nour or face unspecified consequences. He
claimed that constituents who shake his hand and greet him on
the street during his regular visits to the district are
questioned by State Security minutes later. Additionally,
Nour charged that the work stoppage of the new Ministry of
Health clinic under construction in his district also
constituted retaliation against him.

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The Parallel Party
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8. (C) Nour also complained of actions by Musa Musa, formerly
his best friend and deputy leader of the Ghad Party, until
they fought for control of the party in Mid-September.


9. (C) Musa and fellow expelled members of the Ghad's central
committee Ragab Hilal Hameida and Mursi Al-Sheikh have now
set up their own Ghad Party in parallel to Nour's. Nour told
poloff he was convinced Musa's efforts to form a
rival/parallel Ghad Party leadership were financed by State
Security and coordinated with the wider GOE. He noted that
the first "General Conference" of Musa's parallel Ghad Party,
staged in early October, had received front page coverage on
leading pro-government daily Al-Ahram. Nour asserted that
the parallel party's conference had been populated not by
dissenting Ghad Party members, but by a "rented" crowd
organized by Musa's brother, a personal friend of Gamal
Mubarak and a member of the NDP policies secretariat.


10. (C) Nour observed that on October 12, a parallel Ghad
Party newspaper, identifying Musa as party leader, hit the
newsstands, replacing Nour,s Ghad Party paper. Showing
poloff a copy of Musa's "dummy" Ghad paper, Nour pointed out
several articles on the first three pages - one defaming Nour
as an incompetent and irresponsible autocrat, one praising
Mubarak's restraint and dignity in the face of taunts and
insults from Nour, and even a page three article asking "why
are Gamal
Mubarak's political rights being denied?"


11. (C) Nour claimed that the "dummy" paper had cost the
"actual" Ghad paper thousands of dollars in lost revenue and
was bound to confuse the his paper's substantial readership.
Moreover, Nour added, Musa's "dummy" paper was issued and
distributed without any license or permit, a criminal
offense, but the GOE had not prevented it. Nour's written
complaint to the Public Prosecutor's office on the matter has
gone unanswered. Moreover, Nour continued, there are now
signs that Musa's parallel party is planning to field its own
candidates for parliament, under the "Ghad Party" banner.

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Criminal Forgery Trial to Resume
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12. (C) Compounding Nour's woes, his trial on criminal
forgery charges is scheduled to resume on October 22.
Prosecutors declined to drop the case against him, as some
observers had expected, when their star witness told the
court in June that he had been coerced into giving testimony
against Nour by prosecutors (ref B). Nour predicted that the
court would hold daily sessions beginning October 22, and
consume as much time as possible during the two weeks before
the November 9 election.

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Who's Behind It?
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13. (C) Nour was convinced that the campaign against him
could ultimately be traced back to Gamal Mubarak and his
supporters. He claimed that they see him as a threat to
Gamal's plans to succeed his father. He also charged that
the political leadership appears to have delegated to State
Security the task of coordinating the campaign of harassment.
Nour confided that the stress of the past few weeks had
taken him to the breaking point, adding that he saw the end
of his political career on the horizon.

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Comment
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14. (C) Although we are unable to absolve Ayman Nour of any
past wrongdoing in either his political career or his private
legal practice, we find credible Nour's assertion that the
campaign against him switched into high gear in the lead up
to parliamentary election. Young and charismatic, Nour
diverges from the archetype of the Egyptian opposition
leader. Virtually all of his opposition counterparts are in
their seventies, out of touch with youth, and wedded to
outdated and impractical political ideologies. On one hand,
even under ideal circumstances, he can barely dent the
anticipated electoral support for the NDP parliamentary
candidates. On the other hand, it does appear that he has
offended -- and gotten under the skin -- of the political
establishment, which has decided to retaliate with the full
arsenal of political tools at its disposal. End comment.


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