The protests against President Mubarak in Egypt have escalated in the last few days now that the beleaguered president has said that while he will step down, he won’t do so until September. To try and stop protests, or at least quell them, Egypt shut down almost its entire Internet service last week and much of this remains in place today.
WikiLeaks has now revealed that in 2008 the US State Department was in discussions with President Mubarak’s government about unblocking an Egyptian blogger who had apparently been trying to expose police abuses in the country.
In the cable, an extract from which you can see below, the US describe the blogger as a “Human-rights activist”.
The Egyptian police have had particular criticism in the last week because of the heavy-handed approach they took with protesters. This is unlike the Egyptian army which said it would not interfere with protesters and would restrict itself to protecting important buildings.
The cable doesn’t reveal why the two videos were removed, though given that the US State Department had to contact the Egyptian government we can probably guess.
While the US and Egypt have been close allies for years now, efforts are still being made to restore full Internet and other data services to the country but companies such as Google and Twitter have stepped in to allow some people to get messages out of the country in recent days.
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