Solidarity from Egyptians in the United States

**we recieved this e-mail from friends living in the US, all other Egyptians who are living in the Us are most welcome to add their signature (maybe in the form of a comment or by sending your signatures directly to shehabfakhry@yahoo.com ),this is supposed to be sent to the Egyptian consulate in New York and to the General Prosecutor [El Na'eb El Aam].

To whom it may concern,
As Egyptians living in the United States, we have been following the alarming setbacks of democratic reforms in Egypt. We strongly condemn the attempts to influence and limit the independence of the Egyptian judiciary, including the disciplinary measures taken against judges Hesham Bastawisi and Mahmoud Mekki. We demand that those disciplinary measures are immediately dropped and that every possible measure is taken to ensure the independence of the Egyptian judiciary. We also strongly condemn the recent arrest and detention of pro-democracy activists in support of the judges, who did nothing but exercise their right of publicly expressing their opinion in a peaceful manner. We ask that the charges against them be dropped and that they are immediately released from custody.

Shehab Fakhry Ismail
Doctorate student in philosophy
The New School for Social Research

Rime Naguib
Doctorate student in sociology
Northwestern University

Ahmed Abdel Meguid
Doctorate student in philosophy
Emory University

Khaled Fahmy
Professor of modern
Middle Eastern history
New York University

Karim Tartoussieh
Doctorate student in Middle Easter Studies
New York University

Waiel Ashry
Doctorate student in modern Arabic literature
New York University

Nader S. Metwalli
Ph. D. studentWallace H. Coulter
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
/ Emory University

Rania Salem
PhD student in Sociology
Princeton University

Hossam El-Asrag
Ph. D. studentAerospace Department
/ Georgia Institute of Technology

Hanan Thabet
MA student in Near Eastern Studies
New York University