Hunger strike TENS of Palestinians and Egyptians who have allegedly been detained without charges for more than two years went on a hunger strike on Saturday, prominent human rights activist Hafez Abu Saeda told Al-Ahram Weekly. Abu Saeda is in charge of the complaints committee attached to the National Human Rights Council (NHRC). The suspects said their detention was "politically" motivated, and that they were being punished for their active support of the Palestinian Intifada. The detainees are all reportedly being held at the Gharbaniyat prison near Alexandria. Conflicting details about the detainees (how many there were, whether or not they faced charges, and where they were from) appeared in the press. According to Abu Saeda, the detainees were not arrested for committing crimes in Egypt, but were most likely detained for "illegal entry" via Egypt's borders. Noting that some of the suspects were in poor health and required proper treatment, the NHRC issued an appeal to President Hosni Mubarak requesting their release. Trial adjourned AN ALEXANDRIA court adjourned the trial of a French archaeologist charged with attempting to smuggle antiquities out of Egypt until October. Forty three year-old Stephane Rousseau was arrested in August 2003 when customs officers at Cairo airport found several terra-cotta figurines and 158 gold and silver Islamic coins in his luggage. Prosecutors said the items were antiquities whose export was banned under a 1983 anti-smuggling law. The prosecution further charged that the antiquities were stolen from the excavations the suspect had been working on. When Rousseau's lawyer insisted that the archaeologist -- who was in charge of sketches for a French archaeological team working in Alexandria harbour -- had purchased the items from various curio shops, the court ordered a new expert's report on the seized pieces. Rousseau faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty. He is currently free on bail. Swedish investigations SWEDEN seems to be paying the price of a deportation order it issued two years ago when it extradited two Islamists wanted for terrorist related cases to Egypt. On Thursday, Sweden's foreign minister called for an international probe into allegations that Ahmed Egeiza and Mohamed El-Zarri had been tortured when they arrived home. Egypt has agreed to the inquiry. Both men were deported in December 2001. Sweden agreed to the move based on "secret" evidence, a factor that sparked the anger of human rights organisations regarding how the suspects would be treated once they were handed over to Egypt. Last Monday, a Swedish TV channel aired a documentary claiming that Swedish police had originally handed Egeiza and El-Zarri over to US agents. The documentary also alleged that the men were tortured while in detention in Egypt, and that Sweden had received classified reports confirming this. A military court, in the so-called "returnees from Albania" case, sentenced Egeiza to 25 years in absentia in 1999. President Hosni Mubarak overturned the 1999 sentence in April 2004 and ordered a retrial, which again took place via a military tribunal, and resulted in the same sentence. Unimpressed by the sentence, Human Rights Watch took Egypt and Sweden to task over the trial and treatment of Egeiza, arguing his conviction by a military court violated fair standards and failed to address his complaints of being tortured. In response, Sweden argued that it had received assurances from Egypt that the men would neither face the death penalty nor be mistreated. El-Zarri's status remains unclear.
