Egypt's April 6 Movement Reacts On Aliaa Magda Elmahdy Photos

April 6 Youth Movement denies that feminist blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy who posed naked in her blog last month is a member of the revolutionary group. 

The Egyptian uprising and its aftermath have created strange bedfellows, like all revolutions do. Some of them, like the Salafi Wahhabis and the Gulf-based Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, joined late and may now have more influence than the secular youth who braved the bullets and the torture and the baltagiya.

The April 6 Youth Movement, a leading force behind the January 25 Revolution, has denied reports that a young Egyptian blogger who posted nude photographs of herself online is a member of the group, Ahram Online has recently reported.

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy apparently thought she was striking a blow for sexual equality and free expression in Egypt when she posted nude photographs of herself on a blog. Instead Ms. Elmahdy set off a wave of outrage here, stoking conservative Islamist sentiments that many liberals fear will undermine their prospects in the country's parliamentary election next week.

The April 6 Youth Movement’s official statement on Tuesday followed reports by Al-Arabiya news that alleged El-Mahdy was a member of the movement.

“Alia El-Mahdy has never been a member in the April 6 Youth Movement. Shame on Al-Arabiya for this terrible professional mistake," said the Movement in its official statement. "Not every political activist - whether famous, renowned, unknown or whoever - is a member of the movement, as it has a specific system for registration.”

The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general said. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs).

We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” the general said. He added: “None of them were (virgins).”