March 7, 2013

WASHINGTOIN (JTA) — An Egyptian human rights activist set to be honored by the Obama administration says a tweet on her Twitter feed celebrating a deadly terrorist attack on Israelis in Bulgaria was the result of hacking.

Samira Ibrahim is one of ten women who on Friday will receive the International Woman of Courage Award at a State Department ceremony led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Michelle Obama, the first lady.

A July 18 tweet on her feed and first reported this week by the conservative Weekly Standard notes the suicide bombing in Burgas that day that killed five Israeli tourists and a bus driver.

“An explosion on a truck transporting Israelis at the airport of Burgas, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea,” it says. “Oh Wowwww this eases off the day today very nice very nice news.”

Ibrahim’s most recent tweet on her Twitter feed, dated March 6, the same day as the Standard story, claims her Twitter account has been hacked multiple times and that any expressions of racism and hatred are not hers.

She does not explain why she never removed the offending tweets.

Another March 6 tweet decries attacks on Egyptian Copts, likening them to anti-Semitism.

Ibrahim’s State Department biography says she was one of seven women during the initial 2011 Tahrir Square protests police subject to forced “virginity tests.”

“Born in Sohag, Upper Egypt, she was arrested while in high school for writing a paper that criticized Arab leaders’ insincere support of the Palestinian cause,” the biography says. 

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