Tyrants Beware: The People of Egypt Have done It! They Have Driven Mubarak Out!

"Egypt's military leadership
Brief profiles of members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as it assumes power from Hosni Mubarak."

Feb. 11, 2011, 17:53 GMT

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201121185311711502....

Hosni Mubarak has resigned as Egypt's president and transferred his powers to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

General Omar Suleiman, vice-president and former intelligence chief, is among the key retired or serving military officers on the council.

Others include Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, defence minister; Lt Gen Sami Anan, chief of staff of the Egyptian army; Air Marshal Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister.

Here are brief profiles of some of the men that make up the council:

Mohamed Hussein Tantawi

Field Marshal Tantawi became minister of defence and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces in 1991. In so doing, he became the first Egyptian to hold the rank of field marshal after 1989.

Some reports suggest that Tantawi, 75, has been seen as a possible contender for the Egyptian presidency.

During the 2011 Egyptian protests, Tantawi was promoted to the ministerial rank of deputy prime minister, while retaining the defence portfolio.

Tantawi famously became the first member of government to visit Tahrir Square on February 4. He is said to have engaged military officers as well as protesters during his brief visit.

Tantawi served in three wars against Israel, starting with the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars.

Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed

Air Marshal Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed, the air force chief, became commander of the Eastern Air Zone and then the Southern Air Zone in 2005.

On 1 July 2007 he became chief of the operations department and towards the end of the year he was appointed Air Force Chief of Staff.

Within three months he replaced Magdy Galal Sharawi as air force chief, taking up his post on 20 March 2008.

Sami Hafez Anan

Lieutenant-General Sami Anan is the commander of 468,000 troops, and is seen as having a crucial role in co-ordinating interim arrangements for the government in Egypt.

Anan was in Washington when the uprising began and he cut short his visit to return. It was reported that the United States was pushing Anan for a key mediating role, though it was speculated that he was far too close to Mubarak to retain any role in a new government.

Some of the other members in attendance at Friday's supreme council meeting were:

Lieutenant-General Abd El Aziz Seif-Eldeen, commander of air defence and Vice-Admiral Mohab Mamish, chief of navy.

From what some people have reported, the Egyptian Army was responsible for enough of the violence against the protesting Egyptians, though I don't recall if that happened during the last week of January and not since, or how long. And I don't know how widely it happened in the country.

Another AlJazeera report of Feb. 11th says that there were large and huge demonstrations in all or many Egyptian cities and there, as in a northern town on the Sinai, where protesters tried to storm a police station. It's the following page, which provides a video, but the main one is mostly about history since the 1960s.

"Egypt celebrates as Mubarak resigns
Hundreds of thousands celebrate as Egyptian president hands over power to the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces." (4:03)

Feb. 11, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011211164636605699...

(snip)

The top figure in Egypt's new regime is now Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the country's defence minister.

After the announcement, he drove past Mubarak's former palace, where crowds cheered him. He stopped briefly to thank and hail the pro-democracy campaigners before driving in.

In its third statement to the nation since Thursday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said it was examining the situation "in order to materialise the aspirations of our great nation".

The statement said that "resolutions and statements regarding the ... actions to be followed" in order to achieve the demands of the people will be handed down later.

In the televised address, the spokesman also extended "greetings and appreciation" to Mubarak for his service to the country, and saluted the "marytrs and those who have fallen" during the protests.

'Dream come true'

The crowd in Tahrir responded to Suleiman's statement by chanting "we have brought down the regime", while many were seen crying, cheering and embracing one another.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition leader, hailed the moment as being "a dream come true" while speaking to Al Jazeera.

"I can't tell you how every Egyptian feels today," he said. "We have been able to restore our humanity ... to be free and independent".

ElBaradei reiterated that Egypt now needs to return to stability, and proposed that a transition government be put in place for the next year.

(snip)

'Explosion of emotion'

(snip)

Mr ElBaradei, as plenty of people have been saying in articles, has been out of Egypt for 30 years and oddly speaks as if he's seriously one of the Egyptians who've never left and have long-suffered; and apparently relatively few of the millions of demonstrating Egyptians know who he is. Odd guy!

The text under "'Explosion of emotion'" briefly describes large protests in other cities, as well as saying what Obama and Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, said today. Both should stay out of Egyptians' affairs, because Washington and the EU don't have honest intentions for the Egyptians. And this part of the article concludes by saying that the "Swiss foreign ministry, meanwhile, has confirmed to Al Jazeera that they have frozen assets linked to Mubarak".

The next part of the article has the subheading of, "'Farewell Friday'", and this part also briefly mentions large demonstrations in other cities, as well as protesters having tried to "storm" a police station in the Sinai. There was one death and 20 injured there. And earlier today, "protesters had laid siege to the state television's offices in Cairo, accusing the broadcaster of being a Mubarak mouthpiece. The military stood aside and allowed them to surround the building, which had been heavily defended in previous days".

The article concludes with the following:

Army statement

Earlier on Friday, before Mubarak's resignation, in a statement read out on state television at midday on Friday, the military had announced that it would lift a 30-year-old emergency law but only "as soon as the current circumstances end".

The military said it would also guarantee changes to the constitution as well as a free and fair election, and it called for normal business activity to resume.

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tahrir Square said people there were hugely disappointed with that army statement, and had vowed to take the protests to "a last and final stage".

The military's guarantee, can it be trusted after this military has supported the Mubarak regime after all of these years and a lot of the money Washington was providing to this regime was used for the Egyptian military?