A lot of the news coming out of Egypt these days is truly professional journalism at its best. And because it is at its best, it is also heart-breaking and maddening.
But regardless of how excellent some of the reporting has undoubtedly been, readers are left with nagging questions that just won't go away. And maybe that's as it should be, because it draws us in for more answers.
Last week, two of the best journalists covering the Egypt story filed spine-chilling accounts of former political prisoners and their relatives rampaging through the Ministry of Interior -- which ran the security police and made the life and death decisions about torture -- looking for the files of their loved ones. Some of those loved ones has been secretary executed. Some had been tortured until they died. Many had been "disappeared" and would probably never be heard from or about again.
Those journalists are Hannah Allam of McClatchy Newspapers and Andrea Bruce of The New York Times.
Here's how Hannah Allam begins her piece, which is datelined Cairo:
"Trudging through dungeon-like cells and mounds of shredded documents, hundreds of Egyptians on Saturday surged into the Cairo headquarters of the dreaded State Security apparatus for an unprecedented look inside buildings where political prisoners endured horrific torture."
"Some former prisoners sobbed as they saw their old cells, recalling electric shocks and severe beatings. Families held passport photos of missing relatives and were desperate to explore the dank chambers for clues to their fates."
How could you not read on?
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