US embassy cable - 05CAIRO8034

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, Ayman Nour 
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. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
"Dirty Tricks" Campaign Shifting into High Gear 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
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 
-------------------------------- 
 
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? 
---------------- 
 
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. 
 
 
RICCIARDONE