“I wasn´t able to say good-bye to anybody except my two cell-mates, and they put me in a transfer-truck and straight to the police station and they released me.”
“They gave me my ID and said: Shall we call you a cab? And I said: No, I want to walk. And they said: In your prison uniform? I said: I am proud of it. And they looked at each other and one of them said? Yes, sure, feel free!”
“And I wanted to walk. I needed to walk around in the streets, see people. Ok, I was only incarcerated for six-months, which is nothing in comparison to friends and colleagues of mine, who have been there for ten years and over now. But I still needed to walk, see people. And a pleasant surprise was people walking up to me and shaking hands and saying: We know what you did and welcome back.”
“It´s a pity. Not only me. There are loads of people like myself. Who could make the course of the country much better, much less suffering, much less poverty, much better education, opportunities for better life, better healthcare. But the military are there and they will never surrender power until they have to.”
"I spent a night at the police station. Next day, my lawyer contacted the attorney general and said: 'There is no ground for bail, you have to release him.' So I went to the prosecutor and he said: 'There is a new charge against you. You insulted the police officers.' And he read out the insults. At that point I knew where we were going. They didn't want political charges against me, the were going to have a misdemeanor. I said: 'Fine, I have two requests. Number one - seize the memory of the cameras in the police station. They will provide the final word, whether I insulted them or not. And two - if you are going to arrest me, I don't want to be confined in the same police station, because clearly, there is a problem. Either I insulted them and they have a grudge, or I haven't insulted them and they are trying to frame me.' And he said: 'Fair and square.' And they put me in a cell in the prosecutor's office on my own. There was nothing to sleep on, I thought that when my lawyer came, I would ask him to buy me a carpet, and if not, I would just have to sleep on the floor. And ten minutes later, the police force came and they said: 'Come with us.' I went downstairs with them, there was no point in resisting, no cameras around. As l went down, I saw the head of the prosecutor's police force, that carry out the orders, was standing there and he was being told off by two generals from the police force. One of them was telling him: 'Who do you work for? The police or the prosecutor?' As they saw me, they walked away and I asked him: 'Excuse me, I am in your custody. Where am I being taken?' And he just shrugged his shoulder and signalled - I don't know. "
"It was half and hour of fear. I didn't know where I was going. Thoughts of Jamal Khashoggi came to my mind. Because you never know where nervous breakdown will happen and a dictator will make a stupid mistake. He will regret it later, but it will cost you your life."
"I sat there and the officer told me - your type of business is a very sensitive one. We are not transgressing on your rights in any way, we would just like to get to know you. And remember, there is no harassment. I said - yes, sure, go ahead. He begun asking questions - are you aware of any international organizations that operate in Egypt? I said - yes, the Human Rights Watch, when they come to Egypt, they usually operate from my office. And he had two options. To bang his hand and say - how dare you? Or to find a way out. He said - and how did you meet them? I said - through the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights. And he said - are you a member of it? I wanted to say - stop being silly, you know I am a member of it. But I said - yes, I am a member and a very active one. And again, this was in a very relaxed tone. He said - and who is your secretary general? Again, he found a way out of the confrontation. Anyway, it went this way and when he finished, he said - ok, now you know me and any type of situation you find yourself in, you will be dealing with me.
I left and on the first visit, I told my father what happened. Being retired judge and having gone through these things himself, he probably gave me the best piece of advice in my life. Not necessarily that we agreed on everything, my father was a very strict man, it was either defiance or yielding. But this time he said - very soon they'll ask you to work for them. And this is the worst thing that can happen to you, to be a snitch. To work against your colleagues, when that happens.
He said - it's your life. I can't force you. But if you are not up to this confrontation, walk out of your business now and they will forget about you in six months. But don't, whatever you do, do that to yourself - to be a snitch."
"There were times when I was prohibited from printing in the country. It was done by a sheer thuggery. They would call the printer and tell him - if you print the Cairo Times, we will come after you. If they come after you, it means the tax office, the labour bureau, everything. They start inspecting, maybe they find a problem and they may close your business. There were times when I was just standing there with the films and a one-hundred-Dollar bill in my hand looking for a backpacker to carry the films for me to Cyprus so that I don't have to travel. Sometimes someone did it for 100 USD when I showed him these are simple films and someone would be waiting for him at the airport. But I always had my visa ready for Cyprus. The Cypriot Embassy understood, I didn't have to go for an interview. Every time I came, I just sent my passport and had my visa ready. So if I didn't find a backpacker, I would buy tickets and the hotel knew me. I would land in Larnaca, take a taxi to Nicosia, straight to the printing house, give them the films, go to the hotel, wake up in the morning, buy a fresh shirt and maybe a brush, go back to the printing house, wait until they are finished. They would ship the copies as cargo and I would take a taxi to the airport and fly to Egypt. And in a lot of cases, the cargo was confiscated. But I insisted I would still print. Which meant a lot of financial damage for me. But I went all the way until it was really no longer financially possible. That was in June 2003. It broke my heart, I cried like a child."
Before the security forces asked me to work for them, my father told me: Don‘t, whatever you do, be a snitch! It was the best piece of advice in my life.
Hisham Kassem is an Egyptian patriot but was born in 1959 in Tripoli, Libya. His father served as a judge there at the personal invitation of the Libyan monarch. At that time, it was only a one-year stay. But when the family began to face persecution from the regime of Egyptian President Nasser, his father decided to flee again to Libya, where, after the intervention of the Red Cross, his family and little Hisham were allowed to follow him. They remained in exile in Libya until 1972, when the new President Sadat guaranteed them impunity and the return of the family‘s extensive assets. Hisham Kassem studied English literature at university, but his passion is journalism and newspaper publishing. In 1992, he moved from Alexandria to Cairo, where he owned and published the English-language periodical The Cairo Times, which succumbed to economic pressure from the government in 2003. He subsequently ran the independent daily Al Masry Al Yum and, as a convinced liberal and head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, considered a political career. Although he does not confirm it himself, there has been speculation about him running for presidency in the 2023 elections. In the summer of 2023, Hisham Kassem was arrested and subsequently sentenced to six months for an alleged insult of a government minister and a completely fabricated accusation of attacking police officers. He was released in the spring of 2024, after the elections, which were won for the third time by General Sisi. This interview was conducted on the occasion of Hisham‘s participation in the Forum 2000 conference in Prague in October 2024. Later that year, Hisham Kassem was going to speak at an expert conference in Sarajevo, but the Egyptian authorities did not allow him to travel out of the country any more.
