EGYPT: AYMAN NOUR LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH

UNCLAS CAIRO 004414 SIPDIS SIPDIS NSC FOR MIKE SINGH E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM EG SUBJECT: EGYPT: AYMAN NOUR LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH Sensitive but Unclassified. ¶1. (SBU) The following letter to President Bush from Ayman Nour (imprisoned leader of the Ghad Party) was delivered to poloff on July 15 by the driver of Gameela Ismail, Nour's wife. The letter was translated from Arabic by Embassy staff. Text of the translation follows: Dear President, I write to you from behind uncouth bars and large walls, as large as the injustice, fraud, and punishment that I have been subjected to. Perhaps, if I had been somewhere else, I would have been happy to begin my letter by congratulating you on your 60th birthday, which we consider here the age at which one can start his political life and think of having political ambitions. For before that, ambition is a crime punishable by prison, exemplary punishment, and the penalty of political execution because you were hasty in wanting something before its time. And the criterion is of course your peers and competitors, most of whom have hit the ceiling of their 80,s and sometimes 90's. Dear Sir, I was not hasty or overly ambitious when I ran in the first presidential elections, which may be the last for me, because I did not measure up my age to the acknowledged and acceptable age in Egypt. Instead, I looked at the world around me, to you, to Blair, to the many other figures, that I thought my country deserved. I imagined that your January 2005 speech during the State of Union was addressed to my generation of liberal reformers in all the countries that suffered for years from your support for regimes that are both chronic and addicted to dictatorship and coercion. I believed what I heard about "transformational diplomacy", and I did not realize that it meant a transformation, due to regional interests that we paid the price for in the past, from what we had understood to be constants; and it seems that it is the destiny of reformers to continue to pay the bills forever! And here I am in prison hearing again news about the return of the "Strategic Dialogue" and a visit by three officials in the next few hours. And I realize that history repeats itself. For when the last of the Egyptian peoples, demonstrations revolts were happening in 1919, the demonstrators were chanting for the spiritual and intellectual leader of the revolution Saad Zaghloul, while chanting at the same time for Mr. Wilson who said the same thing you said in January 2005 when he declared the Twelve Principles, the most important of which were the right of Egyptians to determine their destiny. But my forefathers were stunned by Mr. Wilson,s sudden recognition of the British Protection of Egypt, and because they did not know of "transformational diplomacy" which the young Secretary Rice declared upon reaching her position ) and maybe even before that - they were shocked and their chants for Wilson were turned against him. Dear Mr. President, I have endured since January 2005 until July 2006 the brunt of presenting a young and promising reformist project, lonesome except for the people,s support, empty-handed in the face of those who have everything: money, power, media, jail, law, and institutions. But my faith in my country and its sacred right in the rotation of power and my faith that I am a one-hundred percent Egyptian project that came out of the womb of this nation and for it. I did not hesitate one moment to break the monopoly and the lie that the only alternative to "them" (the Egyptian government) is terrorism. I tolerated the President announcing ) after your State of the Union speech of Jan 2005 - in a public interview with writers and journalists that I had received $70 million to compete with him! I tolerated being stigmatized by that which I have not committed and having my reputation and dignity assassinated, and having his (Mubarak) media propagate ) even until now - that I am an American product, financed and endorsed by America, and you know that I am not, and that not one court hearing in my trial which the media broadcasted was bereft of an insinuation or a declaration of this accusation. I had imagined that running in the presidential elections without money or support from the state and without the ability to spend one-percent of what "they" spent and coming in second ) despite everything that happened - is a testimony of innocence insofar as my financial status, and in quashing the lie of the $70 million which the President personally propagated, and I do not know where from he came up with it, though it is flagrantly fake and severely nave, but in our country when the president says something, it is the truth. At least amongst his men and the monopolized media. And you can imagine that the raiding of my house and my arrest was basically aimed at finding the sum in my paperwork after they failed to find it in banks, but it did not occur to them ) because the President was the one who said - that it was a big lie. And now, Sir, that I have paid a huge price for my naivete, and for believing that we cannot go from bad to worse, because the truth is that it can. A "tailored" court issued a sentence imprisoning me for five years and depriving me of all my political rights for 11 years(!) and back then, it was said: "You have a Cassation Court to go to". And on May 18, the court hearing was a new farce, amidst a security siege and prevention of my lawyers. A judge was selected to try the judges and myself on the same day, at the same court, to uphold the ruling against me. And now the only hope is for the President to issue a Presidential Pardon in accordance with Article 149 of the Egyptian Constitution, which allows him that right. Albeit, the President is not concerned with my release, and this position seemed very clear when 110 members of Parliament submitted to him a request last month asking that a Presidential Pardon be issued, but he did not answer them! And now, in light of conditions which are far from humane, and which deprive me of all my rights as a prisoner - such as writing, corresponding and being cuffed for intervals close to 13 hours! - I lose every day part of my life and feel like a clear and specific target especially since I am diabetic and hypertensive, though I am only 41 years old. Today "they" pressure my party, so that a group close to Gamal "the son" can usurp power. They besiege our newspaper, our only gateway, and they set on fire to my electoral premises a few weeks ago and arrested a group of my supporters and so far continue the retaliation series which even amounted to depriving me of medical treatment, that I had to perform surgery on myself without anesthesia! Maybe all these things seem small, and you may see them as trivial, and I indeed see them as trivial and am willing to endure them and more, if they were the price for an upcoming reform and a freedom that we as a great nation deserve. Unfortunately, everything that has happened and is happening to me, is used to terrify anyone who thinks of doing what I did. What is happening to me impounds hope, tomorrow, and the future. Unfortunately, I will not ask you for anything for me, though I believe in your ability ) after God,s - in doing it. But I am asking you to maintain the hope for coming generations that I dream will not have to see what I am seeing now. Dr Ayman Nour July 12, 2006 End text. JONES