A picture summarizing a revolution .. Sisi owned the keys to power alone

Mahmoud El Naggar - Cairo

It was like a picture of the contestants before the start of the competition, which should end with one winner, picked up in 2011 and ended with the winner alone and the exit of all the players in stages in different ways, some of them chose to go out and some of them forced him and some of the use of the winner until the last stage in the race and then overthrew immediately Make sure it reaches the finish line.

After the overthrow of Mubarak and forcing him to step down on February 11, 2011, the members of the military council were aware of the youth of the revolution on the ground. The Egyptian street knew the symbols of the youth of the revolution and the members of the military council were known only by then-defense minister Hussein Tantawi and his chief of staff, Sami Annan.

The Council, which was mandated by Mubarak to run the affairs of the country, organized a series of meetings with various political and youth forces to study the options of the transitional period after stepping down under the demands of the revolutionaries in the Tahrir Square (Central Cairo), which had been burning since the early days. To take pictures with them and send them to the military editors in the newspapers for publication.

The story of a picture
During this period, the director of the military intelligence service, Major General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and the head of the organization and administration, Major General Mahmoud Hijazi, took a picture in front of the al-Masa Hotel (owned by the army) with a number of the youth of the revolution: Wael Ghonaim, Abdul Rahman Samir, Mahmoud Sami and Asma Mahfouz.

In October 2014, months after Sisi's announcement as president, the activists re-published them on social networking sites when they saw Sissi and the media choir moving towards naming the January Revolution as chaos, to remind him of that image.

The picture that frightened the military council to the extent that it issued a statement clarifying the time and circumstances of its capture greatly shortens the stages of the Egyptian revolution since it stepped down, until the Sisi completely seizes power.

Many of those in the photo approached the military council as the "protector of the revolution" until the roads broke out at the events of March 8, 2011, after the military police attacked Tahrir Square and dispersed the young people's sit-in by force, to join the armed forces in the field, Then the events of Maspero and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, where many young people were shot dead by army and police forces at the end of the year.

Most of the youth then sided with the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for presidency, Mohamed Morsi, against the wishes of the military junta and the remnants of the Mubarak regime who wanted to bring former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq to power.

The young men objected to the marches of the national team, and met their wishes with the soldiers and the Fallujah. The planners of the demonstrations of 30 June 2013 found the bridge they had crossed into Tahrir Square, which they could only enter through these youth and their currents and movements.

After all had been rid of the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, the media began to disappear completely with the new regime to betray the rebels, and with the help of some of the rebels who maintained their alliance with the new regime for fear or anticipation.

Guillotine countermeasures
The earth turned its course, and the members of the junta - and the Sisyphean itself - became enemies of the regime, not blindfolded until they disappeared before their eyes. The law of the demonstration, in which the founder of the April 6 Movement, Ahmed Maher, and his colleagues Alaa Abdel Fattah, Mohammed Adel and Ahmed Duma, who was recently sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and a fine of 6 million pounds (about 330,000 dollars), was put on trial.

Ahmed Maher was sentenced to three years in prison and was released in early 2017. He has to carry out a supplementary surveillance for a similar period in which he is forced to surrender himself daily to the police station from 6 pm to 6 am, after he was charged with beating in November 2013 police officers in Cairo and organizing a demonstration Without a license within the events of the Shura Council famous that year, and he can only write articles from time to time on his Facebook page.

Mandatory withdrawal
Asmaa Mahfouz, who published the famous video about her participation in the January 25 demonstrations, was forced - under the pressure of the harsh attack on her to inform the coup - to disappear from all eyes and to withdraw to her home to raise her daughter "high" after the Kuwaiti government prevented her from entering her territory to visit Her husband who works there.

Wa'el Ghunaim is the most famous name among the youth of the revolution, which disappeared on the Friday of anger on January 28, 2011 and was known only after the departure of Hossam Badrawi - who was appointed Secretary of the National Party at the time - just before Mubarak stepped down to the State Security building and was released; Preferred withdrawal.

Ghoneim waited more than two years to show up again on his personal Facebook page and explain why he had withdrawn from the scene after realizing that his reading of the events had been wrong since Mubarak stepped down until July 3, when the army eased President-elect Mohamed Morsi, asserting that he was naïve when Wrote his famous tweet on July 2, "The former regime will not return."

Ghoneim stressed that the conflict, which he believed for democracy and freedom, was discovered as a zero conflict between the military and the Brotherhood, and that each wants to tighten his grip on power and the exclusion of opponents and suppression, as he described.

Some youth of the revolution, like Mohamed Abbas, sensed the difficulty of living freely in Egypt. They chose exile. When a member of the youth movement, Khaled al-Sayed, who was in the famous picture, tried to catch up with them, Cairo airport authorities arrested him on charges of involvement in cases Violence in 2016, and unloaded his luggage from the aircraft bound for Qatar, and handed over to a security.

Picture of date
Sisi ruled alone, and when he ensured that he succeeded in excluding all the young opposition and currents, between a prisoner and a solitary and isolated political life, he turned to all those who helped him to reach power, including his brother-in-law, Major General Mahmoud Hegazi - who was with him in the famous picture - The army, and then removed him in October 2017.

The picture is a testimony to the history of those who want to be considered unforgettable lessons, carrying the harsh memories of the painful young people who will follow the symbols of the revolution against their revolution in ignorance or hope. Sisi remained the only winner who managed to transform everything in that picture into history.