TUNISIA, SAUDI ARABIA: Press freedom on the run

On Saturday evening, Tunisian Web journalist Slim Boukhidir was heading to a local Internet cafe in the city of Sfax when he was stopped by a group of men and stuffed into a French-made automobile.

He was taken first to a police station and then he found himself back in the car and heading outside of the city and into the rural hinterlands.

The car stopped and the journalist, who was freed last July after spending eight months in prison for publicly criticizing President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, was released without harm.

But not without a warning, according to an account he gave to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists:

After leaving the police station, they started insulting me and threatened to inflict on me the same fate of Libyan Internet journalist Daif Al Ghazal, kidnapped and killed in neighboring Libya in 2005.

The U.S. gets all hot and bothered about human rights abuses and suppression of speech in places such as Iran or Syria. But it has remained relatively silent about an apparent uptick in repression of journalists among its allies in the Arab world, like the staunchly pro-American Tunisia or Saudi Arabia.

EGYPT: The confusing fate of kidnapped tourists

The fate of 11 Europeans and eight Egyptians kidnapped by masked bandits is unfolding amid sharp rocks and painted caves in a Sahara desert that is at once sparsely majestic and disorientating -- much like the information released about the hostages by the Egyptian government.

In a confusing swirl of developments in recent days, the tourists were reported kidnapped, then freed, then not freed. The latest is that the German government is negotiating to release five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians who were snatched Friday near Gilf Al-Kebir in remote southwest Egypt.

“The location of the kidnappers has been pinpointed. It’s a no-man’s land between the Sudan, Libya and Egypt borders,” Boutros Sadiq, Sudan’s undersecretary of foreign affairs told journalists Tuesday. “We are not going to have an operation that harms the tourists.”

EGYPT: Too many babies

Stop, and listen to the sound of babies wailing.

Egypt’s population is growing too fast to sustain it, especially in the squatter neighborhoods of Giza, where 23,000 babies are born each year. That number adds to an overall annual population growth of 1.9 million people. President Hosni Mubarak is again encouraging birth control under the slogan: “Before you add another baby, make sure his needs are secured.”

Since Mubarak took office in 1981, the country’s population has nearly doubled to about 76 million, according to Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. Some counts put the number at more than 80 million.

That is straining a desert nation with shrinking farmland and limited water resources, and an economy in which about 45% of Egyptians live on $2 or less.
The poor are having the bulk of the babies, most notably in rural areas where large families are regarded as key to economic survival. The government’s Ask for Advice campaign is attempting to change such attitudes. It teaches contraception and other family planning methods and seeks to persuade men to be satisfied with daughters, instead of preoccupied with gaining sons.

Cairo’s upscale neighborhood of Zamalek makes demographers happy: It records a mere 235 births each year.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: A crowded Cairo street. Credit: Reuters

EGYPT: The trouble with Mugabe

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe flew into the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik nattily dressed and unapologetic, and left the same way, avoiding censure last night by the 53 nations attending the African Union summit.

Some of his peers chastised him for violently stealing the June 27 election that silenced opposition parties and won Mugabe his sixth term. But many African leaders remained publicly quiet, reacting to the 84-year-old former guerrilla the way one winces at a friend who shows up with trouble behind his smile.

Perhaps it was a desire to avoid comparison. Egypt and Libya, for example, have also been criticized repeatedly over the years for repression, torture and jailing political opposition figures. Washington has vilified Mugabe and is seeking broader U.N. sanctions against Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the Bush administration gives about $2 billion in annual military and economic aid to the government of President Hosni Mubarak, a strategic ally in the region.

MIDDLE EAST: A rift within Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda increasingly faces sharp criticism from once-loyal sympathizers who openly question its ideology and tactics, including attacks that kill innocent Muslims, according to U.S. intelligence officials, counter-terrorism experts and the group's own communications.

A litany of complaints target Osama bin Laden's network and its affiliates for their actions in Iraq and North Africa, emphasis on suicide bombings instead of political action and tepid support for, or outright antagonism toward, militant groups pressing the Palestinian cause.

The criticism apparently has grown serious enough that Al Qaeda's chief strategist, Ayman Zawahiri, felt compelled to solicit online questions. He responded in an audio message released this month. For more than 90 minutes, Bin Laden's second-in-command tried to defuse the anger.

Click here to read more.

—Josh Meyer in Washington

Photo: Ayman Zawahiri, left, Al Qaeda’s chief strategist, seen here with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998, recently responded on tape to questions, many angry. Credit: Mazhar Ali Khan / Courtesy Paladin InVision/WETA

MIDDLE EAST: Danish cartoon controversy continues to ripple

The anger unleashed in the Muslim world by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad more than two years ago is apparently far from simmering down.

In the latest of the drawings' consequences, the Danish government decided to close its embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan after threats of terrorist attacks against their premises in these two countries. According to a report in a Danish newspaper, the Danes have evacuated their staff from embassies in Kabul and Algiers to an unidentified "safe location," where they continue to work.

The newspaper said that the Danish intelligence linked the threats to the reprinting of the cartoons in February by international newspapers.

MAURITANIA: Clashes with suspected Al Qaeda militants

North Africa has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Deadly clashes erupted Monday evening between armed forces and a group of suspected Islamists in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.

The Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera showed footage of Mauritanian forces shooting with assault rifles at a building where the militants were apparently holed up.

According to news agencies and Arab satellite news channels, the gun battle led to the killing of a number of policemen and Islamic militants.

One of the Islamists believed to have perished in the shoot-out was the infamous Sidi Ould Sidna, a 20-year-old Al Qaeda suspect who was accused of the assassination of four French tourists in the south of the country last December.

JORDAN: Guns galore at Middle East weapons fair

The specter of conflicts in the Middle East intensifying and widening worries many countries in the region. But some Arab nations are showing a growing interest in acquiring or selling sophisticated weapons as suggested by the wide participation in an international exhibition for military hardware, held in Jordan over the last few days.

The event, Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference (SOFEX) 2008 was a muscular display of tanks, armored vehicles, high-tech surveillance equipment, gunboats, machine guns, etc.

Check out the first minute or two of the promotional video for the event and you'll get the idea.

MOROCCO: World's first Facebook felon freed

Justice failed him, but the king’s word set free a man who was sentenced to three years in a Moroccan prison for a Facebook prank.

Fouad Mourtada’s crime was to create a fake Facebook account in the name of Moroccan Prince Moulay Rachid, the brother of King Mohammed VI.

It’s not normally a big deal. If you search the social networking site, you’ll find fake profiles for George Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, Osama Bin Laden and many others. The 26-year-old engineer said he believed it was just a “fun” thing to do.

But royal authorities were offended. They condemned him. Mourtada was  summoned to a Casablanca courthouse. During his trial, Mourtada insisted the creation of the profile was just a joke. In a statement to the Committee of Support for Fouad Mourtada, the detainee said that he admired the prince, and did not think his act was hurtful:

I never thought that by creating a profile of his highness prince Moulay Rachid I was harming him in any way. I, as a matter of fact, did not send any message from that account to anyone. It was just a joke, a gag.

Nevertheless the judge sentenced him to three years in the slammer.

MIDDLE EAST: No countries for old journalists

These have not been good times for journalists in the Middle East.

As Ashraf Khalil reports from Jersualem, Israeli authorities are threatening to shut down  at least tighten up on the operations of Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news channel.