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February 7, 2011

Egyptian Authorities Acknowledge Detaining Google Exec 
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Egyptian authorities have also acknowledged that they had detained a
Google executive named Wael Ghonim, who had mysteriously disappeared a
week ago. Ghonim was an administrator to a Facebook page that helped
inspire the protests. Earlier today, protesters in Tahrir Square held a
symbolic funeral procession for Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud, the Egyptian
journalist who was shot dead by a sniper while he was covering the
protests. On Saturday, the Egyptian government released 35 foreign and
Egyptian human rights activists on Saturday, including a representative
from Amnesty International.

Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty: "We suspect that this is a
very premeditated attack from the government and the authorities,
because they don't want Amnesty International to record human rights
violations, they don't want to be held to account, which is what Amnesty
does, and they want to distract us from what we are doing. Rather than
focusing on the substance of what's happening in Egypt, they want us to
spend all our time figuring out where—what's the security and
safety of our staff."



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