Defendants in the case of the Islamic Liberation Party, who include two Britons, say they are on trial for their beliefs. Jailan Halawi was in court On Monday 28 October, the second hearing session in the trial of 23 Egyptians and three Britons was due to resume at 4pm, however defendants showed up at court 30 minutes late. Annoyed by the delay, Judge Ahmed El- Ashmawi adjourned the case to the next day, assigning Prosecutor Walid El-Minshawi to find out who was responsible for the delay. Nevertheless, the delay was to the benefit of defendants' families who were, consequently, permitted additional time with their loved ones. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Maajid Nawaz, one of the British defendants, described the charges against him and other suspects as "an accusation against Islam". Nawaz alleged that he and the other men were accused "only for being Muslims", who abide by the teachings of Prophet Mohamed, whose call for "lighting the world of Islam through establishing a Caliphate does not involve violence or compulsion". Nawaz said that the dream of millions of Muslims around the world is to unite under one banner, "replacing the hegemony of the Americans and Israelis by the victory and honour of Islam". "We were calling for Islam without any violence, but through intellectual persuasion. Accusing us of working to topple the government through speech and writing is an insult to all standards of justice," he said. Nawaz moved to Egypt in September 2001 as an exchange student at the University of Alexandria with the aim of improving his Arabic. A student at a London university, he studied British law and Arabic. He described his stay in Alexandria as "pleasant" until his arrest in April this year. While admitting to being a member in Britain's Hizb Al-Tahrir (Liberation Party), which is legal in the United Kingdom but banned in Egypt, Nawaz believes that his arrest came as a result of his discussions with colleagues at University of Alexandria. "Used to freedom of speech, and as we do in Britain, as a way of introducing ourselves, we talk about our political affiliations and groups we belong to. Naively, I spoke with my colleagues about the group in London, what it means, and things like that. Probably it was one of the students who reported me to the security apparatus, and hence I was arrested." Nawaz adamantly denied being in Egypt on a mission for his party, insisting he only came to the country to study the Arabic language. "I had a return air ticket for July, but it was seized and my future remains vague," he said. Ian Nisbet, who changed his first name to Yehia after converting to Islam, is a Web designer who came to Egypt in October 2001 to study Arabic at a Cairo language centre. Nisbet explained his conversion by saying that he had become "dissatisfied with the secular way of life in the UK", which pushed him to research the monotheistic religions. "I finally found my aspired aim and converted to Islam in 1994." Like Nawaz, Nisbet was scheduled to return to Britain this summer. Denying the charges against him, Nisbet said he challenges the court to find any content on the Liberation Party's Web site that is either illegal or contravenes Islamic teachings. He further described the arrests as highly ironic because "they come at a time when the Egyptian government is calling on the population to increase its political participation, but when you do so they throw you in prison," he said. According to a security source who spoke to the Weekly on the customary condition of anonymity, the government encourages political participation, but "not that based on religion". Furthermore, the source said, "the suspects are being tried for promoting the ideas of an illegal group that is banned in Egypt and many other countries. We know quite well who we are accusing and what they do. Definitely, they are not standing trial for just being Muslims as they claim," he said. The trial of 23 Egyptians and three Britons at a Cairo State Security Court on charges of attempting to overthrow the government through promoting the ideas of an illegal group, started on 20 October with all defendants pleading innocent. All 26 defendants, including one at large, were charged in April with attempting to revive the so-called Hizbul-Tahrir Al-Islami (the Islamic Liberation Party) as well as establishing a banned group that aims to overthrow governments in various Islamic countries and revive the Caliphate. Defendants are also accused of possessing anti-government literature. Hizb Al-Tahrir was founded in Egypt in 1974 by two Palestinians, Salem Rahhal and Saleh Serrya -- only to be crushed by Egyptian authorities that same year, after being blamed for an armed attack on a military academy coup known as "the incident at the technical academy". The current case has been widely criticised by international human rights organisations, who called the trial of civilians before a state security court "a violation of international standards for a fair trial". On Tuesday, the court resumed its work, dedicating a session to examining the physical evidence. Before leaving the court, Islamist Lawyer Montasser El-Zayyat called upon foreign papers and representatives of the British Embassy to stop making anti-government statements, saying that these would only harm the case. "This is a case with no political dimensions; it only includes three Britons out of 26, and we do not want any foreign interference in our independent judicial system," he said.
