Protesters in Egypt rally to freed Google chief
Egyptian protesters were today rallying around a freed Google executive whose Facebook page helped spark what he called "the revolution of the youth of the internet".
Wael Ghonim, the company's Middle East marketing manager, was jailed as a traitor for 12 days and has become a hero of the demonstrators since he was snatched off the street on January 27, two days after the protests began.
About 90,000 have signed a Facebook page urging him to be their leader and they expected him to appear in Cairo's Tahrir Square, focus of the protest, later today.
He wept through a TV interview last night as he described how he spent his entire time in detention blindfolded. He said he had not been tortured and that his interrogators treated him with respect.
"This is the revolution of the youth of the internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians," Mr Ghonim said. "Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm. If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, 'Let this country go to hell.' But we are not traitors."
He confirmed that he was the administrator of the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said", one of the main tools for organising the demonstration.
Khaled Said was a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police, setting off months of protests. "I didn't want anyone to know that I am the administrator," he said. "There are no heroes - we are all heroes on the street.
He called his arrest a "kidnapping" and a "crime" but said: "This is not a time for settling accounts or cutting up the pie, this is Egypt's time. I want to tell every mother and father: I am sorry. I swear it is not our fault."
The protesters are demanding the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and have called for another million-strong rally. Today, the government set up a committee to recommend constitutional changes that would relax presidential eligibility rules and impose limits on the number of terms served. Mr Mubarak has been in power for 30 years.
Vice-president Omar Suleiman also announced another committee to monitor the implementation of all proposed reforms. Yesterday the government said there would be a 15 per cent raise for six million public employees - a potent message to almost a quarter of Egypt's workforce about where their loyalties should lie.
In Washington, the Obama administration urged Egypt's leaders to include more people in a national dialogue on reform but would not endorse demands for Mr Mubarak to resign.
