Death of Mustafa Amin Evokes Nostalgia for Egypt's Brave Journalist

by James Napoli

Downtown Cairo traffic was at a standstill most of the day April 14, as thousands of people massed between the Akhbar al-Yaum newspaper building and a mosque off Ramses Street nearby.

A casket, draped in the Egyptian flag and carrying the body of Egypt's foremost journalist, Mustafa Amin, was borne through the throng between the newspaper and the mosque. This wasn't a crowd of spiffily-dressed celebrity mourners, but average people, many from the poorest areas of Cairo, particularly the Bulaq neighborhood that sprawls around the newspaper.

He was more than a journalist to the ever-increasing number of poor people in Egypt. He was their benefactor.

Mustafa Amin had continued to run the charity organizations he and his twin brother, Ali, who died in 1976, had started through the newspaper. The charities raised millions of pounds from donations and funneled the money to pay for such things as surgical operations and eyeglasses for people who couldn't afford them, and even to help penniless entrepreneurs set up kiosks to get businesses started.

The death of Mustafa Amin at the age of 83 also marked the end of an era of journalism in Egypt, and not just in a metaphorical sense. He grew up with his brother in the home of his great-uncle, the nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul. They started recording Egypt's history from the time they started their first newspaper at the age of 9.

Mustafa Amin continued to write about events in Egypt until very near the end of his life in his column Fikra (Idea), which was started by Ali in 1952. It was still being published in al-Akhbar, the paper the brothers had founded the same year and which was nationalized with the rest of the press under President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

"His column was the last 100 percent non-censored column in Egypt," said Akhbar al-Yaum's diplomatic editor, Sonia Dabbous. "Nobody touched his column, not even the editors. It was a sign of press freedom" that is now gone, she said.

Others whose prominence had once given them that same degree of freedom, Galal El Hamamsy and Ahmed Bahaa El Din, have also passed away, she said.

Mustafa Amin's column hammered away at threats to the presumed salubrious effects of democracy and freedom for decades, even publicly attacking the emergency law, passed in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and renewed for another three years this February.

But the freedom Mustafa Amin enjoyed was hard-won.

Amin was imprisoned and tortured under Nasser in the mid-1960s after being tried for spying for the United States. He was set free by Sadat in 1974, and went on to become editor of the weekly Akhbar al-Yaum while the head of Egyptian intelligence went to prison for torturing Amin.

"Nobody touched his column, not even the editors. It was a sign of press freedom."

Buoyant, healthy and optimistic by nature, Amin survived his years of imprisonment with good grace, producing some of his most memorable books, including accounts of his prison experiences and acquaintances, during that period.

Ahmed Shawki, an Egyptian journalist who was working for the Associated Press at the time of the trial, recalls the day that Amin was sentenced to life imprisonment: "He was smiling all the time. He came out [of the court] smiling. We're going to miss the courage of Mustafa Amin."

In a 1992 interview with this reporter, Amin claimed that Nasser would sometimes stand outside the prison door to listen while Amin was being tortured. He blamed Nasser's closest confidant, the journalist and author Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, for arranging to prolong Amin's years in prison.

Heikal, like many of the journalists who are today running Egypt's newspapers, got his start and training from Amin, who was Heikal's boss even before the 1952 revolution.

One of the innovations brought by the Amin brothers to Egyptian journalism was to send correspondents not only to the scene of national events, but to important international events, including the wars in Korea and Palestine.

But when Heikal went to cover a war, said Amin, "He doesn't really cover the war. He covers, you know, his own hopes and ideas." Heikal, said Amin, "breathes lies."

Amin also is credited with animating Egyptian journalism, "sensationalizing" it, in the view of his critics, with aggressive reporting and a popular style independent of political parties. He also helped promote women in the journalistic profession.

Even though Amin was demoted from his editorship after some run-ins with President Sadat, after Sadat's death Amin always was generous in his praise of the former president's courage and for his peace initiative with Israel.

Amin also was fond of repeating his generalizations about the different ways Egyptian regimes have treated the press since the Egyptian revolution.

"When the president doesn't like what you write, he hangs you, that's Nasser," he said in the 1992 interview. "Sadat, he either sent you to prison or kicked you off the newspaper. Mubarak, when he doesn't like what you write, he goes on TV and attacks you on TV."

Amin said he found President Mubarak's approach the most agreeable of the three. "That's very good credit for a newspaper man to be attacked by the president. Very good propaganda," he said. "I think Egypt is the only country in the Middle East where you can criticize the president by name without being shot or hanged or put in prison."