Kamal Abbas, Gamal Mubarak and Ibrahim Eissa are all their early forties.  All three are deeply involved in the debate over the future of Egypt.  All three have dedicated followings.  By this time next year, Gamal probably will be president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, having been boosted there by the heavy hand of his father, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the military strongman who has run the country as a closely-held dictatorship for the past 27 years. Kamal and Ibrahim will most likely be serving time in Egypt’s hellish prison system, sent there by the same heavy hand for opposing Gamal’s ascension to power. Abbas is the labor leader I wrote about last August (“Strikes Sweep Egypt, Labor Center Pay”) http://www.rayabernathy.com/?p=18.  His outspoken support of workers striking across Egypt last winter drew retaliation from the Mubarak regime.  It shut down the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), an NGO Abbas founded 20 years ago after leading a successful strike at the Egyptian Iron Works in the Heyman Industrial District just outside of Cairo.  Now the Egyptian opposition blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy http://arabist.net/arabawy/ is reporting that Abbas has been sentenced to a year in jail on a trumped up charge of “defamation” brought by a Mubarak sycophant.Eissa is the editor of the opposition newspaper Al Dustour and he’s been giving Mubarak all he can handle for years.  As reported by Liz Sly in the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 15 (“Egypt’s Media Defy Mubarak at their Peril”) htttp://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/monday/chi-egypt_slyoct15,0,7285323.story Eissa has been similarly accused of “defamation” for writing in a front-page editorial that 89-year-old Hosni was having health problems. In September, Eissa was sentenced on an old charge that he unfairly criticized Gamal for “not being ready” to lead the country. His trial on the new charge began Oct. 1. Sly wrote: “In the last few months, liberal activists, members of the Moslem brotherhood and media types, judges, professors and bloggers have all been harassed, detained or imprisoned.”  Of the Abbas conviction, which is now on appeal, el-Hamalawy blogged: “Now, we have a court sentence to imprison citizens who published facts about corruption cases.  Does this mean we give impunity to corruption and immunity against any criticism or disclosure?  Is this believable?” Egyptian opposition leaders say it is indeed believable, part of a vicious turning-of-the-screws on dissent in a nation where poverty and totalitarian government are pushing America’s only stable ally in the Middle East toward the arms of Arab militants.  Both Eissa and Abbas seem undaunted by the prospect of entering prisons where more often than not detainees emerge with multiple broken bones and full-blown AIDS.Eissa said to Sly: “I’ve found that I’m allowed to take my iPod.  This is progress in the Mubarak era. Yes, they do torture you in your cell, but they allow you to listen to your iPod.”

Abbas told me in my interview with him: “We know we are living in a dictatorship, in a closed society, so we have to make demands.  We are on the right track. We will come back.”

Workers at the giant Mahalla textile plant where the strikes germinated last winter are already back. As reported in Huffington Post on Sept. 24 by blogger Freddy Deknatel, 20,000 of them are on strike again demanding 150-day shares in annual profits, improved industrial safety and a raise in annual bonuses.

Send your letters of protest on behalf of Kamal Abbas and Ibrahim Eissa to: His Excellency Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Abdin Palace, Cairo, Egypt.