Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2002, pages 36-37

Cairo Communiqué

 

Egyptian Appeals Court Orders Civil Rights Activist Ibrahim Released, Retried

 

By Andrew Hammond

Supporters of a more liberal society than what’s currently on offer in Egypt were given a boost Feb. 7 when Egyptian civil rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim was ordered released by the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appeals court, and given a retrial. Scenes of jubilation followed the announcement, as assembled diplomats, journalists, rights activists, lawyers, Ibrahim’s family and even curious passersby enjoyed the sense that a bit of justice finally had been done. Ibrahim was sentenced to seven years in jail last summer on charges of defaming Egypt’s reputation by publishing rights reports on sectarian tensions between Christians and Muslims; intending to monitor Egyptian parliamentary elections; forging voting documents; and illegally receiving funding from the European Commission. His guilty verdict, however, was widely regarded as politically motivated against someone who had severely embarrassed the government and President Hosni Mubarak himself with his vocal public campaigns for more civil rights.

Western diplomats say they have been doing many things behind closed doors to secure the 63-year-old sociologist’s release. Ibrahim’s American passport made him a cause célèbre in the West. But he could be back in jail as soon as the retrial begins, meaning the authorities have a weapon against him to ensure he keeps his mouth shut in the coming months.

The government immediately set to using Ibrahim for its own ends. A week after his release, a parliamentary discussion about prison conditions included filmed testimony gleaned from Ibrahim during his 10 months’ incarceration that conditions were no worse than “the most advanced countries”—something he must have willingly agreed to do while incarcerated.

While in jail, Ibrahim found himself rubbing elbows with an intriguing combination of jailed Islamists, convicted homosexuals and former MPs jailed in corruption scandals. The day of his release, he recalled, “I heard cheers through the whole ward. That cheer used to only come when Egypt was playing soccer and scoring. But I looked at my watch and it was too early for a match and Egypt had already been eliminated from the Africa Cup. All of the big cases go to this jail”—and all of them feel they have been wronged by an unjust state. The Islamists in particular gave him a warm welcome. In interviews afterward, Ibrahim spoke of a “special rapport” with the Islamist prisoners—some of whom he’d studied for years while on the outside. “By the time I got there,” he said, “they knew my case inside and out. I didn’t have to explain myself.”

During his 10 months in prison, Ibrahim had plenty of time to ponder just what it was he’d done to draw the government’s wrath. At the time of his arrest, the general speculation was that it represented a warning shot to keep the rest of civil society timid in advance of upcoming elections. The handling of his conviction, however, and the fierceness of the accompanying media smear campaign against him led many to conclude there was a much more personal motivation behind the scenes. Ibrahim speculates that it was the combined effects of several of his activities and comments—including election monitoring efforts, studies of Muslim-Coptic tensions and his notorious interview in spring 2000 with a Saudi magazine about the royal tendencies of Middle Eastern republics. “As I was going along in the last 10 years,” he said in public comments, “I was alienating one influential actor after another.”

Ibrahim emerges into a world very different from the one he left behind. Locally he faces a civil society and human rights scene that has been partially demoralized by his arrest and incarceration. Globally, he faces a world irrevocably changed by the events of Sept. 11. The ensuing American war on terrorism has fueled a steady stream of Western calls for a reformation in Middle Eastern thought. “The expectation is that I will be back, resuming all my activities, and now that I have an even higher moral ground to stand on, I will take a leadership role,” he said, although he has no immediate plans to reopen his Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies.

Ibrahim remains banned from travel and is awaiting the announcement of the date for his State Security Court retrial, which will once again confront him with charges of accepting unauthorized foreign funding, embezzling European Commission funds and defaming Egypt’s image.

“We are the last region to catch up with the third wave of democracy and we have to do more,” Ibrahim said. “Otherwise we will be condemned to backwardness for hundreds of years.” We cannot compete in the world in the 21st century without being democrats; without giving civil society its full due; without allowing the imaginative and creative power of our people to come out.”

The example set by Western governments in the wake of Sept. 11—particularly Washington’s decision to subject terrorism suspects to military tribunals—has made Middle Eastern democracy and an unfettered civil society an even more elusive goal. “I tremble at what is happening in the United States and in some of the Western countries as far as civil liberties are concerned,” said Ibrahim, who noted that repressive regional regimes have already used the Western changes as a “license” to clamp down further.

 

A Return of Sectarian Violence

Sectarian violence, by coincidence, returned to southern Egypt just days after Ibrahim’s release. On Sunday, Feb. 11, clashes between the Muslim and Coptic inhabitants of Bani Wallnems village, near Maghagha in Minya governorate, broke out, leaving 11 injured, including two policemen. Part of the newly-constructed al-Azra (The Virgin Mary) church and five houses belonging to Copts were torched, three cars destroyed and an entire village left in shock. Heavy security forces cordoned off the village, and press, as usual in these situations, was denied access. A statement issued by the Interior Ministry a few hours after the clashes affirmed that the situation was “under control” and that the security apparatus had succeeded in containing the violence.

According to some accounts, the dispute began when the ringing of the church bells drowned out the call to dawn prayers coming from an adjacent mosque. Other accounts said the church and the local mosque have been building upward in an attempt to outdo each other’s height. Efforts are underway to hold “reconciliation talks” between Muslim and Coptic figures in the area.

The clashes were the latest in Upper Egypt, home to a large Christian presence. On New Year’s Eve of 2000, violent clashes erupted when a trade dispute went out of control in the mainly Coptic Christian village of al-Kosheh in southern Egypt. Twenty Copts and a Muslim were killed. A court in the Sohag governorate acquitted most of the defendants and issued light sentences on the rest, triggering Coptic anger. The verdict was contested and a retrial was recently accepted.

Muslim-Coptic relations have soured over the past two decades, particularly in Upper Egypt. Observers attribute this to the rise of Islamism and to the fact that the south of the country remains underdeveloped and lacks basic services, such as electricity and fresh water, in many of its provinces. Critics argue that the official approach to the problem has focused on the security dimension, such as tracking down Islamic militants, at the expense of development.

Egypt has been sensitive to such clashes because of attempts by Christian groups in the U.S. to lobby Washington to press Egypt on alleged persecution of Christians. Cairo also fears that pro-Israeli groups use these incidents to embarrass Egypt in America. Amid signs that the Coptic lobby has passed its prime and become less vocal or heeded, however, Mubarak was not given a hard time on the issue during his visit to Washington in early March.

 

Precedent-Setting Deportation?

The UK-based rights group Amnesty International announced in February that two men extradited by Sweden to Egypt in December were being held at a prison outside of Cairo. Amnesty issued a report on Feb. 1 saying that the Swedish ambassador in Cairo, Sven G. Linder, had visited 39-year-old Ahmed Hussein Agiza and 33-year-old Mohamed Ibrahim el-Zarri at Tora prison south of Cairo.

Sweden had said in December it would deport Agiza and el-Zarri after rejecting their requests for political asylum on the grounds that they were suspected of committing “terrorist acts” in Egypt. Since then Egypt had not issued public statements or informed the men’s families about their whereabouts. Agiza, said to be the leader of the underground Islamist group the Vanguards of the Conquest that is affiliated with the Jihad group, was tried in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999. His name was also on the 14-man wanted list that Egypt issued in 1997 following the Luxor massacre, which left 58 foreigners and four Egyptians dead. Islamist lawyer Montasser Zayyat has filed an appeal on behalf of Agiza asking for a retrial. Given the current U.S.-led war on terrorism, however, it’s unlikely Mubarak will agree, fearing no embarrassment internationally at this stage.

El-Zarri is wanted in conjunction with a series of terrorist attacks carried out in Egypt during the 1990s, and is alleged to be a key figure in the Jihad militant Islamist group. The deportation of the two men marks the first time a European court has accepted and acted on evidence gathered by Egyptian intelligence services. Political analysts described the move as a change in strategy by Western countries that could lead to the extradition of many other wanted expatriate militants.

Since Sept. 11, European and North American states have shifted policies and perceptions on the issue of political asylum and human rights—a change which has raised fears among international human rights organizations about possible widespread violation of human rights.

Amnesty accused both Sweden and Egypt of “flagrant” violations of international law and said that “forcible return of any person to a country where they are at risk of serious human rights violations is a violation of Sweden’s obligations under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”

Stockholm, however, has said it is confident both men will be treated properly and had received assurances that the Swedish Embassy would be allowed to follow their trials and visit them. After visiting the two, the Swedish ambassador told Amnesty they seemed to be in good health. “Neither man showed obvious signs of having been tortured,” he told reporters. “They seemed to be in relatively good condition.”

But Agiza’s family told Amnesty he had suffered “torture and ill-treatment” while being held incommunicado and that the Swedish authorities hadn’t been much nicer to him after arresting him in Sweden.

Andrew Hammond is a free-lance journalist based in Cairo.

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