“Egypt’s rights defenders are NOT afraid of the army”

I received an angry email from a rights activist friend, asking whether I read NYT’s story on Talaat el-Sadat’s prosecution by the military. My friend was so upset by misreporting that:

Mr. Sadat’s case has not prompted the kind of outcry from human rights activists and democracy supporters in Egypt that other cases have, in part because it involves one of the remaining red lines — the military. Another reason is that he spins tall conspiracy theories, suggesting, for example, that Israel and the United States may have had a hand in the assassination.

My friend was fuming, as the NYT report totally ignored the fact that eight rights group issued a statement denouncing the trial. “We drafted this statement precisely because I didn’t want anyone, let alone the NYT, to say Egypt’s rights defenders are afraid of the army,” my friend wrote me in an email exchange.

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