From New York, this is Democracy Now.

Inshallah, hey, Jima. Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the Great now.

Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers.

This is a blessed Friday.

In Syria, tens of thousands crowd the great mosque of Damascus to attend the first Friday prayers since rebels toppled long-time

authoritarian president Bashar Lassad last Sunday. We'll go to Damascus to speak with Middle East

Associated Press reporter Sarah Al-Div. Then today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Leila Swet, the mother of the prominent British

Egyptian political prisoner, Alaabd al-Aid al-Faqa. She's calling on British officials to pressure Egypt

for the release of her son. We'll speak to the Cairo University Mathematics Professor in London, where she's been standing outside the foreign office.

I'm definitely angry, really angry from the way things are happening, and of course angry about him continuing to be imprisoned.

He wasn't supposed to be in jail for five years, let alone the five years before in his first

jail term.

Then to Amali Yeshitella, long-time chair of the African People's Socialist Party and

leader of the Ahuru movement.

He's due to be sentenced to prison Monday after a Florida jury found him and two others known as the

Uhuru three guilty of conspiring to act as Russian agents but cleared them of

actually doing so.

A jury determined that we were not Russian agents and which meant of course that they

agreed that the only thing we've ever done is work for the liberation of African people.

On the one hand, on the other hand, they convicted us of a conspiracy to do something that never happened.

All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

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