Our man (and son) in Egypt.

• Author: Mayton, Joseph

PRESIDENT BUSH LIKES TO TALK about democracies budding all over the Middle East, and he often includes Egypt as an example. Yet Egypt under Hosni Mubarak is anything but. It lacks freedom of the press and freedom of speech. The police are increasingly cracking down on peaceful demonstrations. And Mubarak has anointed his son Gamal as heir apparent. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Egypt on June 20, 2005, she said the country was "taking some steps forward and that needs to be encouraged and applauded."

In 2004, Mubarak promised to do away with prison sentences for libel. "Nobody in Egypt will be imprisoned again for their opinions," Press Syndicate chairman Galal Aref said at the time. But Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the independent weekly Al Dustour, and his colleague Sahar Zaki are evidence that this promise hasn't been kept. They were sentenced to one year in prison for an April article that described a lawsuit against Mubarak and his family: (They are free pending appeal.) The suit charged the president, his wife, Suzanne, and Gamal with "wasting the government's resources," "squandering foreign aid," and turning "Egypt into a monarchy." The two journalists were also fined $1,750. The lawyer who filed the lawsuit, Saied Abdallah, received an identical sentence and was also fined the same amount.

Two other journalists have been sentenced on unrelated charges in the past year, and a number of prodemocracy bloggers have also been detained without charge or trial.

"It is clear journalists are getting cracked down upon. Old scores are being settled by the government," says Hugh Miles, author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World.

Protests are routinely dispersed with violence. Last May, security forces in Cairo brutally assaulted people demonstrating to support reformist judges. Dozens of the protesters were severely injured and hundreds were arrested, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Egyptian government also has a homophobic streak. In the most infamous example, fifty-two gay men were picked up in 2001 from a Nile boat restaurant in Cairo. Twenty-one of them were convicted, with sentences ranging from one to five years in prison.

Even elected officials are targets. The nephew of Anwar Al Sadat, Egypt's president who was assassinated in 1981, was recently sentenced to one year in prison. Talaat Sadat, fifty-two, a member of the Al Ahrar party who sits in the parliament, was jailed for implicating the army in...