just met on campus

Mr. Mouctar Diallo, and he looked great. You may remember him from this blog as our graduate student (a native of Guinea) who was imprisoned and came within hours of electric shock torture in The Gambia, which has one of the more miserable governments in Africa. Mouctar was released on July 13 after pressure and persistent questioning from a number of members of this faculty. Great to see him out.

I was also greatly relieved when he said that his new anthropology research project will not involve The Gambia. [ADDENDUM: Mouctar’s apparent “crime,” which nearly led to torture, was that he was coming to The Gambia from Cairo and was carrying books about the Egyptian Revolution. They seem to have thought he was a professional revolutionary coming to incite a plot against The Gambia’s own deplorable military regime. It turns out he had no involvement in such a plot, which is almost too bad, because their government deserves it.]