Egypts' Foreigner Blame Game

Many in the police and Army were apparently convinced by the propaganda. One activist who was brutally beaten while being detained by the military from Friday until Sunday last week told me how an Army interrogator, who tortured him with electric shocks, was absolutely obsessed with saving the country from the foreign spies trying to ruin it. In an ironic twist, it was another detainee, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood -- another central part of the "conspiracy" -- who finally convinced the interrogator that his paranoia was unsustainable. "He told the interrogator that we weren't a foreign-inspired movement, explaining it was ridiculous to believe that the Pakistanis, Iran, and the United States were doing this, as they don't work together in any way," the released detainee told me. The Brotherhood member, he said, told the interrogator that "we were all Egyptians in the movement."


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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/09/egypts_foreigner_blame_game?page=0,2