|
(Continued from page 43)
months ago, Dr. Mahmoud al-Jaidah was asked to step out of line as he transited through Dubai en route home to Qatar. He has been held ever since, allowed to visit his family once a month after a blindfolded trip from an undisclosed detention facility.
• UAE authorities have given no public statements on the case. But the family of the 52-year-old doctor has no doubt why he was detained: He has been caught up in the escalating pressures across the Western-backed Gulf states against the now-battered Muslim Brotherhood and its perceived Islamist allies.
• The crackdowns in the Gulf began more than a year before the Muslim Brotherhood's political collapse in Egypt this July, but now they take on wider regional implications, meshing with the campaign of arrests by Cairo's new military-protected leadership against the Brotherhood.
• The Egyptian military's ouster of President Mohammed Morsi on July 3 further emboldened the UAE and other Gulf states to step up arrests of suspected Brotherhood supporters, whom they see as a threat to the Gulf's tightly run fraternity of monarchs, sheiks and emirs.
• And in turn, several Gulf countries have stepped up as critical sources of cash for Egypt's new military-backed leadership as it cracks down on Morsi's Brotherhood. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have promised Cairo $12 billion in aid. Several thousand Brotherhood members and other Islamists have been arrested in Egypt since Morsi's fall.
• ___
Police move in with tear gas, ending occupation of
Mexico City center by striking teachers
• MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican riot police have cracked down on the strongest challenge yet to President Enrique Pena Nieto's reform program, sweeping thousands of striking teachers out of Mexico City's main square with tear gas and water cannons.
• Workers moved swiftly late Friday to demolish the half-burnt protest camp where striking teachers had camped out for weeks in a bid to block Pena Nieto's education reforms, which are aimed at introducing teacher evaluations and reducing union discretion in hiring.
• But while Pena Nieto can now use the vast main square known as the Zocalo to hold the country's traditional Independence Day celebration on Sunday, it's unknown whether the crackdown will heighten opposition to his energy and tax reforms.
• Moving against the striking teachers may have set the tone for any future pro (Continued on page 45)
|
|
