The Arab Spring now offers a chance to set the record straight. Insofar as the upheavals now shaking the Middle East and North Africa are genuinely democratic revolutions, they can illuminate a dark past. Arab governments had no interest in opening their archives to public scrutiny even to sympathetic researchers – for they knew that there was much to lose in revealing truth to a public so accustomed to their lies.

Here’s a challenge, then, for the forces of change in the Arab world: Open the archives and let truth spring forth.”

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