Egypt Feature: The Military's Virginity Checks on Protesters (Amin)

 A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

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US WikiLeaks Feature: The Persecution of Private Bradley Manning --- UN Visit Denied (Nakashima)

A United Nations diplomat charged with investigating claims of torture said Monday that he is “deeply disappointed and frustrated” that U.S. defense officials have refused his request for an unmonitored visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing classified material to WikiLeaks.

Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said his request for a private interview with Manning was denied by the Defense Department on Friday. Instead, he has been told that any visit must be supervised.

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The Latest from Iran (6 April): Subsidy Cuts, Oil, and Politics

2115 GMT: Labour Front. HRANA reports that a protest of Abadan refinery workers over unpaid wages was accosted by security forces.

2000 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Oxford University has dismissed allegations of impropriety in its acceptance of the son of Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mehdi Hashemi, for Ph.D. study.

Critics alleged last month that Hashemi had been accepted even though he had not shown adequate academic standards and language qualifications. They also said he did not meet Oxford's residency requirement.

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Israel-Gaza: Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on the War (Reich)

The Goldstone commission’s findings on deliberate attacks on civilians is one of at least seven broad findings (which comprise hundreds of specific incidents) that raise issues about Israel’s conduct....Goldstone’s op-ed pointedly excludes discussion of all of these very serious charges of possible war crimes and possible crimes against humanity

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Egypt Analysis: Losing Human Rights in the Transition (El Amrani)

Mohammad Hossein Tantawi, Head of Supreme Military CouncilOne of the big questions for the future of Egypt is how to change the culture of police enforcement, security agencies and the army when it comes to accountability, respect of the rule of law, human rights practice and more generally attitudes towards public freedoms. It was always unrealistic to expect to change this overnight, and there are several problems to tackle --- to start with: 

• deeply ingrained institutional practices (sometimes codified in laws, regulations and procedures that have their origins in the days of British rule in Egypt, as well as the security state established by Nasser);  
• the need for a shift away from a culture of entitlement, paternalism, sexism, and authoritarianism;
• a structural adjustment to end a micro-economy of corruption that made police officers, for instance, resort to accepting bribes because their basic salaries are low and they were practically encouraged to be on the take to compensate. This of course benefited more senior officers who were engaged in more serious corruption (and were paid adequately) and shielded them from criticism, since everyone was on the take. 

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Tunisia (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A March in Algeria?

1830 GMT: From Alec Ross of the US State Department: "Secretary Clinton spoke with Tunisia PM Ghannouchi today. She encouraged transition to open democracy and on-going reforms."

1710 GMT: In Mauritania, the family of Yacoub Ould Dahoud, who set himself on fire on Monday inside his car in front of the Senate building in Nouakchott, has confirmed that he has died.

1650 GMT: EA readers looking for an introduction to the current issues in Algeria may wish to read analyses by Hugh Roberts and by Amal Boubekeur.

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Head of British Intelligence: We Don't Torture (But You Won't Find Out If We Do)

I am not sure the main story is in the first paragraph of this article by Richard Norton-Taylor of The Guardian of London: the real stunner would have been if the head of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, had announced that his officers were regularly waterboarding and breaking kneecaps.

In lieu of that, I think the real take-away here --- in the first public speech by an MI6 head in the agency's century of existence --- is the levels of barricades that Joh Sawer set up to prevent any exposure of MI6 activities.

In short, the unprecedented appearance was to push back against the pressure, as in the legal case of Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused on three continents, for British intelligence to comply with demands for information. That includes placing MI6 above the legal process: no court can be allowed, in Sawers' view, to have access to documents or testimony.

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Iraq: 30,000 Prisoners Held Without Due Process (Amnesty/Cole)

Juan Cole writes:

Every time there is an election in Iraq, as happened last March 7, the Neoconservatives come out to crow about how great the Iraq War was. Their implicit argument is that Iraq was a brutal dictatorship, is now a thriving democracy. This argument is typical of their warped ethics, since it maintains that the ends justifies the means, and we are not supposed to bring up the dead, the wounded, the damaged that the Neocons have inflicted on Iraq. Never mind that the elections have not so far produced a viable new government. Never mind that democratic institutions are weak or non-existent. Never mind that widespread abuses are committed against the public by the new state.

Amnesty International reports that the Iraqi government is holding some 30,000 prisoners without charges or due process. In some instances the prisoners have been abused or even tortured. About 10,000 of these prisoners were recently handed over to the Iraqis when the US combat mission in Iraq supposedly ended.

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