SD: It's a little frightening that left-wing political prisoners are conflated in the government's eyes with right-wing Moslem fundamentalists.
LS: I don't think it's quite fair to say right-wing, because they are basically forces of national liberation. And I think that we, as persons who are committed to the liberation of oppressed people, should fasten on the need for self-determination, and allow people who are under the heel of a corrupt and terrifying Egypt-where thousands of people are in prison, and torture and executions are, according to Amnesty International and Middle East Watch, commonplace-to do what they need to do to throw off that oppression. To denigrate them as right-wing, I don't think is proper. My own sense is that, were the Islamists to be empowered, there would be movements within their own countries, such as occurs in Iran, to liberate.