YouTube disables anti-torture activist's account

YouTube, not the Egyptian government, has suspended anti-torture activist and blogger Wael Abbas from posting videos of state-sanctioned abuses in his home country for the world to see.

"It's the first time that people saw something like that," says Abbas. "They saw that people are really in pain and agony, and being tortured, and being beaten, and being sodomized. And it was a shock to the Egyptian people."

Says CNN, the Egyptian government is "slowly responding" to the attention brought to abuses of citizens, and Abbas' video footage helped bring to justice two officers in the torture of one 21-year-old man.

Says Abbas of YouTube's suspension of his account:

"With what they are doing now, they are helping tyrants, they are helping torturers, they are helping dictatorships.

This is not really helping people who are fighting for democracy in 3rd world countries. We thought that YouTube was our ally; it helped show the truth in countries like Burma, but with what they did now, it doesn't seem like that anymore."

Repeated complaints about "offensive videos" do lead to suspension of YouTube accounts, says a spokesperson, who would not comment specifically on Wael Abbas' case.

Video of the report can be viewed below, as broadcast on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on November 29, 2007.



