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WikiLeaks: US support Egyptian opposition

29 January 2011 07:55 (UTC +04:00)

The UK newspaper, the Daily Telegraph reported that the U.S. embassy in Cairo assisted a young Egyptian dissident in attending a US-sponsored summit in New York, while concealing his identity from Egyptian state police. Upon the young manâ€™s return to Cairo in December 2008, he informed American diplomats that opposition groups had devised a plan to overthrow Mubarak and put in place a democratic government in 2011.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for â€œregime changeâ€ to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.
The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked â€œconfidentialâ€ and headed: â€œApril 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.â€
In the cables, the dissident in question alleged that â€œseveral opposition forcesâ€ had â€œagreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential electionsâ€. Apparently, this young man has been arrested by Egyptian police during the current unrest.
The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.
The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses, The Daily Telegraph said.