Mubarak Foe, Bravado Gone, Feels Smeared
CAIRO, Oct. 18 - Egypt's most prominent political opposition leader, whose defiance of President Hosni Mubarak won him a second-place finish in this nation's election for president last month, says he is the target of an orchestrated campaign to discredit and marginalize him.
Ayman Nour, whose campaign for president was fueled by charisma and bravado, and whose imprisonment led Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a trip to Egypt in protest, can hardly discuss his circumstances without breaking down.
Not only does he face older criminal charges but he says he, his family and supporters have been hit with a barrage of legal and personal attacks as well.
Several days ago he said he received an express mail delivery of audio CD's of intimate recordings, with the title "The Scandal of Ayman Nour and His Wife." According to Mr. Nour and his wife, who said the recordings were fabricated with actors, an accompanying letter said, "You have trespassed your masters" and then warned: "This time it is in audio. Next time, it will be picture and audio."
It is impossible to say who is waging a campaign against Mr. Nour.
In September, Mr. Mubarak won a fifth term in Egypt's first multicandidate race for president. While the contest was sorely one-sided, with Mr. Mubarak taking more than six million votes, Mr. Nour surprised the government by coming in second with more than 7 percent of the vote.
That should have propelled Mr. Nour and his party into a strong position for the parliamentary elections next month when all 444 seats come up. Instead his party is in shambles, and he is uncertain he can go on.
"When you look at everything that is happening, I am sure, I have no doubt, this is out to crush the party and him personally, at least until the elections are over," said Hisham Kassem, a leader with Mr. Nour of the Ghad party and publisher of a daily newspaper.
For Mr. Nour, who has two teenage sons, the threat of humiliation seems too much to bear.
"I am ready to commit suicide in the middle of the press conference and say, 'What you're doing is the reason for this,' " said Mr. Nour, a member of Parliament, as he dabbed his eyes with tissues during an interview in his home.
The governing party and the government dismiss Mr. Nour's complaints. Officials say he exaggerates his plight and has brought many of the troubles on himself by violating the law and because of his own autocratic style of running his party.
He was originally charged with submitting 1,000 forged names on documents needed to register his party - charges that were undermined when one of the government's chief witnesses recanted in court and said security services threatened to harm his two nieces if he did not testify against Mr. Nour.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a democracy advocate who was imprisoned in 2000 and whose character was attacked in the government-controlled press, says he recognizes a pattern.
"They use the same tactics: character assassination and case fabrication," said Mr. Ibrahim, who was in and out of prison over three years. "They know it might end up thrown out of court, but it drains the energy and resources of the targeted person. They kept me busy for three years, and my health deteriorated. They figure out, 'Let's make their life miserable.' I believe something similar is happening in Nour's case."
Mr. Nour is not entirely a sympathetic figure, having for many years worked within a political system he now derides. He has in the past supported Mr. Mubarak, when it seemed to suit his own political ambition.
But many people involved in Egyptian politics say the Nour case shows that despite Mr. Mubarak's promise to promote a more open and democratic society, it is business as usual in Egypt; those who present even a slight challenge to the governing party's monopoly on power do so at their own risk.
"There is the rhetoric of the government, which talks about opposition parties," said Josh Stacher, a political analyst and researcher working in Egypt for the last seven years. "But in reality it is still putting shackles on parties so they cannot work unfettered."
Mr. Nour's friend and longtime supporter, the lawyer Ayman Barakat, was jailed on criminal charges just after the election. Renegade members of his political party have split off and tried to oust him as a leader.
Mr. Nour said he recently received a phone call informing him that his parliamentary immunity, which theoretically safeguards him against criminal prosecution, would be lifted again in a matter of days, and that he would face new criminal charges and a return to jail. His immunity was lifted for the forgery case and he is still on trial for that charge.
"Why should I be tortured?" he asked, his voice hoarse, his gaze fixed on the floor. "To be imprisoned, fine. But why should I be tortured? To confess? Confess what? O.K., I'm being imprisoned so that they can limit my movement and freedom. But why this revenge? This feeling of revenge is so bitter."
In the past Mr. Nour and his wife, Gamila Ismail, a former journalist for Newsweek, welcomed conflict with the government as a means to promote Mr. Nour and his ambition.
When he was jailed last March, Mr. Nour seemed delighted with the attention. "I'm personally the happiest person in Egypt by this decision, because every session of this trial will be a chance to meet our people and supporters," Mr. Nour told reporters after his arrest in March. "The regime will stand trial in this court."
But that has not happened. Instead it is Mr. Nour - and his wife - who are feeling the heat.
There are markers pointing back, if not to the governing party itself, then to its supporters. Political parties in Egypt publish their own newspapers - and they use those papers to promote their political ideas. Every newspaper must receive permission from state security to publish, or else the publisher can face jail time.
Recently, a newspaper that looks just like the one published by Mr. Nour's party started showing up on newsstands around the city. It is not licensed, and still was distributed and left on the stands. The paper had the same name, El Ghad, as Mr. Nour's paper, and the same appearance. It was put together by those members of Mr. Nour's party who tried to oust Mr. Nour as leader and then broke off to create their own party.
But where Mr. Nour's party is in the opposition, the new Ghad has run articles supporting not just Mr. Mubarak, but also his son, Gamal Mubarak, 41, who is the architect of the governing party's political operation and is often talked about as a possible candidate for president in 2011, when Mr. Mubarak is to finish his fifth five-year term in office.
One article, by Abdel Nabbi Abdel Sattar, said he abandoned Mr. Nour and his party after Mr. Nour refused to let him write an article praising Mr. Mubarak's "commitment to democracy." The article went on to promote the younger Mubarak.
"I would not exaggerate if I said that the Egyptian citizen Gamal Mubarak enjoys popularity that many ministers do not have," the article said. "The simple people are closely attached to him. Gamal Mubarak's passport to Egyptian hearts was not his father."
Moussa Moustafa Moussa, a businessman and former ally of Mr. Nour's in the party, said he led a move to oust Mr. Nour because he felt he was not honest and ran the party like his personal fief. However, he acknowledged that his activities might well have become a convenient tool for those out to get Mr. Nour.
"He disrespected me and I knew how to get him back for it," he said. "After that, people started to join us, and they could be people who think we are right, or they could be people with personal interests, or they could be infiltrators."
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.
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