Here are more details about the lawsuite :

• Three families are sueing the Israeli government in specific : The prime minister and the defense and information ministers.
• These families are the families of 1st lietenant Mamdouh Hussein and soldier Mohamed Amin and Mohamed Aliwa ; to the record this is the first time we know some of the names of the Egyptian POWs in 1956.
• They are demanding L.E 60 Million as a compensation. 
• The lawyer that is representing the families are Embassador Assam El-Din Hawas, the former Embassador of Egypt in Qatar ,FM assistant and the secretary general of the Egyptian society of the United nations.
• Beside the Israeli confessions ,the lawsuite depends upon the Israeli confession aired in the Israeli TV in 1995,they should also consider the Al Jazeera report “The Way to Atlit”

This is a winning case I believe because we got the Israeli confessions themselves.I hope that the case won’t be adjourned like the rest of the POWs cases in front of the Egyptian courts.

Now what stopped me in this report today was its introduction :

AN Egyptian lawyer, whose brother was one of some 250 unarmed prisoners of war (POWs) said to be killed in Sinai peninsula by the Israeli army after the 1967 war, has said that while the Egyptians want peace with the Jewish state, the Israeli military involved in the slayings must be punished !!

Said to be killed !!??

Are You kidding me ?? All this and the national Newspaper that is following the newspaper believes that it was said and that they were only 250 !!

The 250 were those who were killed by Shaked but there were thousands who were killed by the rest of the Israeli forces !!??

From another hand the court decided to adjroun the case again this time to January 12,2008 !!The reason is that the court wanted to give enough time to the lawyers to get documents from the Egyptian Ministry of Defense or this is what it said. Hopefully the Egyptian ministry of Defense will cooperate with the lawyers of the POWs families

he compensations department at a Cairo civil court has postponed to Nov. 1 the hearing of a lawsuit filed by families of 1967 POWs . Originally this court was ajourned from last year !! It is so provoking

With my all respect this is not an independent court order ,it is political one.

He spoke about several points including the nature of his work as the Ambassador of Egypt in Israel ,

Ambassador Mohamed El-Bassiony

according to his confession he went there as an intelligence officer after long career and heading the Israel sector in military  intelligence.

He spoke about Ashraf Marwan ,adding more fuel to the fire , complicating the enigmatic case already , he said indirectly or even directly that Marwan was not our man but rather was working for the Israelis at the same time the public media is glorifying the late businessman and engima man as a national hero.

He spoke about Um Al-Rashrash ,he saidt that it was not Egyptian but rather Palestinian, still what he said regarding the remains of the officers found from several months concern us.

Contrary to we thought , according to Bassiouny the remains were for Palestinian soldiers , of course this is strange because if they were Palestinians ,they would be identified,already the Palestinians as far as I know are keeping chronicles of their wars with Jewish gangs and afterwards the Israeli army. They document every piece of their history so I do not know how they can miss this , they are not Palestinians.

To our core concern regarding the POWs case

According to the former Ambassador we can go and sue Israel internationally because we do not have any evidence that prove that they killed our POWs !!!!!

What can I say !!??

First we can go to international courts to Sue Israel and even win the case with all the evidence we have. Are not the people of Arish eye witnesses ?? Are not the testimonies of the ex-POWs enough ?? Are not the confessions of the Israelis themselves enough ??

What else does he want more ??

The report which was translated by Shady El-Kashaf from Gaza traces back the most POWs Swap since the 1948 war,I will summarize it below till year 1967 because already I am having my doubts regarding some numbers concerning the Egyptian POWs , the report claims that the number of the Egyptian POWs were more than the Israeli POWs ,which is untrue according to my humble knowledge in 1973,also it did not mention the number of the Egyptian POWs that actually returned in 1967.

First of all you must know that several Arabic research centers say that Israel captured nearly 800,000 Palestinians and thousands of Arab civilians and soldiers POWs according to the official numbers since the beginning of the conflict where as the Arabic armies captured more than one thousand Israeli POWs not to mention the the Palestinian and Lebanese militias captured many Israelis whether dead or alive. As you can see with my all due respect ,on the contrary to the Israeli propaganda we lost more than they did according to the IDF numbers.

Second This is based on the official records , which means with Israel infamous record in human rights of Arab POWs you expect that there are thousands of Arab POWs who were killed and never found their ways to the records as numbers not even names.

Now the POW Swap started in 1948 between Egypt and Israel , then in 1968 for the first time Israel swapped its POWs with POWs from the PLO in the first recognition to this group and  the last one after 60 years in 2008 ironically was between Hezbollah representing Lebanon and Israel. 1948 then 1968 then 2008 , 8 is very special number far as I see.

Here is a history line to the POWs Swap:

• Year 1948 :

After the war between the Arab armies and Israel , the Arabs captured a total of “885″ Israeli POWs as follows : The Egyptian army “156″ Israeli POWs , The Jordanian army “673″ Israeli POWs , The Syrian army “48 Israeli POWs” and the Lebanese army “8 Israeli POWs where as the Israelis captured a total of “7116″ Arab POWs !! They do not call it Nakba in the Arab world from nothing !! The Arab POWs were as follows: “5021″ Palestinian POWs , “1098″ Egyptian POWs, “57″Syrian POWs,”36″ Lebanese POWs,”28″ Saudi POWs, “25″Sudanese POWs,”24″ Yemeni POWs and “17″ Jordanian POWs .

Israel swapped its POWs with each country alone. The first swap was with Egypt on 27/2/1949 in the famous Fallujah agreement then with Lebanon from 3/3/1949 till 4/4/1949 then the rest of the Arab countries involved. Syria was the last Arab country to swap POWs on the 21/9/1949

• Year 1954 :

on 30/9/1954 Egypt captured 10 sailors from the ship “Bat Galim” in the Suez Canal,they were released according to the orders of the security council on 1/1/1955.

In December 1954 the Syrians captured 5 Israeli soldiers that were on a secret mission in the Golan heights, one of them “Uri Ilan ” committed suicide in his prison and his remains were sent back to Israel on the 14/1/1955. The other four were swapped for “41″ Syrian POWs on 30/3/1956.

• Year 1957 :

After the Suez War Egypt and Israel had POWs to be swapped.It started on the 21/1/1956 and ended on the 5/2/1956. Israel released “5000″ Egyptian POWs for 4 Israeli POWs in the Egyptian Capture , of course there is no mention about the infamous massacre of Sharm El-Sheikh.

• Year 1961

After the break of the Union ,on the 17/3/1961 the IDF Golani special forces made a military operation on the borders with Israel near Kibbutz “Ein Gev” where they captured two soldiers that were returned later.

• Year 1963

Another swap operation between Syria and Israel on the 21/12/1963 , Syria released 13 Israeli POWs for 15 Syrian POWs

• Year 1967

The mother of POWs problems and scandals not to mention defeats

The Arab armies and countries  involved in the war that time Egypt,Syria,Jordan,Lebanon and Iraq managed to capture only 15 Israeli POWs.

Egypt captured 11 Israeli POWs among them 6 Israeli marine commandos who were captured during a fiasco attack on the harbor of Alexandria , it is not our topic here but the one who caught them was actually a kid , it was a terrible operation by all means.

Then there were two pilots from the IAF and the rest were members in a spy ring.

Iraq captured two pilots who were targeting the airport H in west of Iraq ,those two were swapped for 428 Jordanian POWs !!

Syria Captured only one !!

Lebanon Captured only one !!

The IDF captured on other hand a total of 6708 Arab military and civilian , no order they killed our POWs when they thought that they were too much !!

The IDF captured civilians and military members ; here are the numbers for each country :

• Egypt: 4338 soldiers and 899 civilians. “different from what is mentioned here“
• Jordan : 533 soldiers and 336 civilians.
• Syria : 367 soldiers and 206 civilians.

The swap started on 15/6/1967 through the red cross and the UN and ended on the 23/1/1968.Jordan and Iraq were the first countries and Egypt was the last one.

Iraq swapped two Israeli IAF pilots Capt. Itzhak Glantz-Golan and Capt. Gideon Dror who attacked the H3 Air basese in West of Iraq for 428 Joranian POWs.

Syria swapped a pilot and 3 dead bodies for 572 Syrian POWs.

It is worth to mention that they only mentioned the number of the Israeli side captured from Egypt but they did not mention how many were exchanged for the Israeli POWs , the 11 POWs including the some member of Lavon terrorist espionage ring

• Year 1968 :

Jordan on the 2/4/1968 Israel swapped 12 Jordanian POWs for a body of missing solider from the Karameh battle

Again I will stop here because the content of the blog here is concentrating on the 1956 and 1967 ,you can find the rest of the report in the link above

Ambassador Ibrahim Youssery took this stand this year to sue the Egyptian government in the court for exporting the Egyptian Natural gas to Israel despite the huge public refusal. Ambassador Youssery is a retired Ambassador since 1995 and currently work as international law lawyer. Already I should mentioned that he headed for three years as Head of the Egyptian Government committee for the revision of bilateral and multilateral treaties and the Deputy chief of the Egyptian delegation in the negotiation concerning the execution of the Taba award.

I asked him in the interview about several issues current causing buzz in Egypt whether from the exportation of the natural gas to Israel or the Salam 98 Ferry or the Um Rashrash case or the POWs Case. I asked him about the Egyptian POWs Case because I know from his long international legal expertise we can benefit.

Already my main question to him was about the possibility of suing Israel outside Egypt in international courts whether the ICC or the IJC

Here are the questions concerning the POWs

EC :The Egyptian POWs case is from the most important neglected cases in Egypt, as international law expert; can we go to the IJC or the ICC to sue Israel as citizens not as a state??

IY : We can peruse this matter by bringing it to international courts. There are some technical difficulties to engage the ICC, but the IJC has no jurisdiction here. I agree fully that the Egyptian POWs case is one of the most important neglected cases in Egypt. But we can always engage the Israeli criminals before any court (Pinochet , Mengistu, Sharon cases)

EC: Do we need the approval of the Egyptian state??

IY: We do not need the approval of the Egyptian state.

EC: Can the ICC investigate it without the approval of the Egyptian State??

IY: Yes the ICC can investigate it without the approval of the Egyptian State.

EC :If we go there, are the testimonies of the people of Sinai and the ex-POWs who witnessed the war crimes against our soldiers and officers plus the mass graves in Al Arish and across the rest of Sinai are enough to support our case and open an international investigation for War crimes, especially that there are some Israelis who confirmed our stories??

IY : Yes, the court can accept the testimonies of the people of Sinai and the ex-POWs who witnessed the war crimes against our soldiers and officers plus the mass graves in Al Arish and across the rest of Sinai.

EC: Why do you think the Egyptian government refuse to take it seriously despite it is a win case??

IY : The Egyptian government refuses to take it seriously despite it is a win case, because they don’t care a bit about people and they can not stand any American pressure.

As you can see we can sue Israel abroad in front of the ICC without the approval of the Egyptian State and we can win it with the testimonies of the witnesses and the evidence represented in the mass graves of our troops across Sinai

You can read the rest of the interview here folks

Freedom to our Egyptian POWs in the Zionist prisons

Till now there is no official confirmation or denial regarding what Samir Kuntar had said about the Egyptian POW in the Israeli prison.

As an Egyptian citizen I demand that the Egyptian Government to be honest with us.

It is unfair that Egypt mediates between Israel and Hamas working too hard to swap one single Israeli POW with hundreds of Palestinian POWs without any consideration to its POW in Israel Eyad Abu El-Hassan

Al-kuntar shared with Nawara what he knows about Eyad Abu El-Hassan.

Eyad is from Egyptian Rafah.He was arrested by the IDF in 1989 when he entered Gaza with Ayman Yunis. Both were young men whose ages were 20 years old. They were planning to do some sort of an operation against Israel. They were actng on their own. No one sent them or they knew someone there.

In the jail both young men had to choose which team they will belong to , Fatah or Hamas. Ayman Chose Fatah where as Eyad chose Hamas.

Al-Kuntar believes Ayman was released because he chose Fatah where as till now Eyad is in jail because he chose Hamas.

Whether he chose Hamas or Fatah, Eyad is the repsonsbility of his country. Egypt should work with all possible way to return him back just like Hezbollah did with Al-Kuntar taking in consideration that according to Al-Kuntar all what Eyad did was traspasing the border.

Eyad now is 39 years old , he left Egypt as young man and now he is officially a man.

By the way I am still surprised with this official and unofficial silence in the media , even the independent and opposition newspapers ignored him.

Already I wonder where his family is all that time. If he is really from Rafah,then he is from a tribe and tribes there care for their members and do not stand still like this.