I was wrong. The guards didn't tell Zeid Hamdan to "go home". The judge did! Also, according to the article, there is an explanation for the 'tweet from jail' question:
As he was put into handcuffs, Hamdan managed to pass his mobile phone to his lawyer."I gave him my Facebook code and asked him to do an announcement to my Facebook profile, which he did."
I was wrong again. It was Facebook, not Twitter. What I find confusing is how a person can pass a mobile phone to someone else while being put in handcuffs without being noticed. And why did the lawyer need Zeid's phone to post on Facebook? Everybody knows that you can access Facebook from any payphone or telex office.
I have a feeling that all this is just a mistake. Someone wanting to do good with the president but not being clever or someone wanting to harm the president and give him a bad image. I don’t know, it’s so stupid, you know.
That's reportedly what the guards told Zeid when they released him last night.
I saw this video last year and promptly forgot about it, until I heard that Zeid Hamdan got arrested yesterday. First, here's the story as I understand it:
Zeid Hamdan made the music video over a year ago. In the past few days/weeks, he was taken in for interrogation three times for the 'crime' of 'slandering' President (General) Suleiman in his music video. At the end of the third session (yesterday) he was arrested, only to be released a few hours later. During his incarceration, he managed to tweet that he was in jail, and asked all of his friends to mobilize. And mobilize they did!
The (now) infamous video
The story seems pretty straightforward. But I have a few questions, and searching online, I can't find any more details that might help me answer those questions. Before I get into it though, let it be known that I FULLY and UNEQUIVOCALLY support freedom of speech in all forms, and condemn any government or entity that tries to curtail this freedom.
That being said, here are the points I would like to raise:
1) How was he able to send that tweet from a holding cell? Did his guards forget to take his cellphone? Or does he have a twitter implant?
2) Within a few hours of his tweet, facebook and twitter were being flooded by demands for his release. A protest was planned. People were rightfully enraged by the news. This might lead one to speculate that the government, seeing what a small protest over a polarizing issue has led to in other countries, decided to nip this problem in the bud and release him. While this may be the most obvious reason for the briefness of his stay in the can, is it the real reason? The Lebanese government we all know and love is a slow, sticky, lumbering and often smelly beast. While not outside the realm of possible actions our great bureaucracy can take, it is nevertheless extremely uncharacteristic.
3) Who is(are) the moron(s) who decided to arrest Zeid Hamdan in the first place? The video is on youtube and has been disseminated to many, many other websites. Zeid Hamdan has no control over it. They can't force him to 'take it down'. So this(these) complete buffoon(s) in the security apparatus, in the better interest of our president's good name, decided to arrest the guy who made the video, bringing the video front and center on every Lebanese computer screen. They unwittingly made the video (and its creator (and its 'slanderous' message)) famous!
