There was no shortage of defence witnesses to vouch for Saadeddin Ibrahim during two consecutive court sessions of his retrial last week, Jailan Halawi reports "A first-class researcher"; "a patriot"; "a man whose integrity cannot be questioned" are some of the words used by seven defence witnesses to describe prominent human rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim, standing trial in an Egyptian court on charges of tarnishing the country's image abroad. Several of the witnesses were members of the Board of Trustees of the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Developmental Studies (ICDS), which 63-year-old Ibrahim, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, used to run. The ICDS was a non-profit development organisation that received funding for research work it undertook before being closed down by the government in June 2000. As the trial of Ibrahim and his associates continued at Bab El- Khalq's State Security Court in downtown Cairo on 14 and 15 May, witnesses for the defence gave testimony to the effect that Ibrahim worked for the good of the country. Mohamed El-Gohari, sociologist and former president of Helwan University, a man who has known Ibrahim for 40 years, called Ibrahim "a first-class researcher and a credible social science worker." El-Gohari stated under oath that the ICDS studies results were similar in content to the ones issued by government research centres and universities around the country. El-Gohari said that, having known Ibrahim for quite a long time, he doubted that Ibrahim had published any false or misleading reports about Egypt with the intention of harming the country's interests or defaming its image. Ibrahim and his co-defendants are accused of attempting to tarnish Egypt's image, accepting foreign funds without government permission and embezzlement. His lawyers believe he was prosecuted because his research reports accused the government of rigging the 1995 parliamentary elections. Before his arrest in June 2000, Ibrahim was preparing a group of students and researchers to monitor the parliamentary elections. The 1995 report and another on Coptic-Muslim clashes in southern Egypt in the same year are believed to have been the main causes for his arrest. Said El-Naggar, a prominent economist and head of the New Civic Forum, told the court: "As a colleague who has worked in the field of democracy and human rights for 15 years, I never doubted Ibrahim's academic efficiency, financial integrity and courage." El-Naggar, who was secretary-general of the committee that issued the ICDS report on the 1995 elections, said the report was "just and fair" and insisted that it did not include any phrases that defamed Egypt. Another witness, Abdel-Moneim Said, director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and a member of the ICDS board of trustees, testified that Ibrahim had not accused the government of rigging the elections, but that he only mentioned abuses in the electoral process. He explained that the ICDS drew attention to the many flaws in the Egyptian electoral system, which, he said, was "the duty" of social scientists. Evaluating Ibrahim's research, Said said, "Contrary to the accusations levelled against him, the outcome of Ibrahim's research reflects an optimistic image of Egypt." Ahmed Kamal Abul-Magd, a renowned law professor, who has known Ibrahim for 35 years, said he and Ibrahim differed on the issue of treatment of religious minorities in Egypt, but he defended Ibrahim's intentions and acts. "Anything could be attributed to this person [Ibrahim] except something that deliberately touches the reputation of his country here or abroad," said Abul-Magd, a liberal Islamic intellectual and the Arab League's commissioner for dialogue of civilisations. Member of parliament for the liberal opposition Wafd Party Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour testified that Ibrahim's publishing of a report on electoral fraud actually served the country well by demonstrating that democracy exists. Abdel-Nour, a Copt, also denied that an ICDS report stated that Copts were being persecuted in Egypt. He said that, as a member of the centre's board of trustees, he had approved the report. "The report talks of discrimination, notably in recruitment to government jobs, which is normal in all countries that have a mix of communities," he said. Ibrahim and his associates are accused of receiving illegal funds from the European Union (EU). Prosecutors said he violated Military Decree No 4 issued 10 years ago, which prohibits the receiving of foreign funding without government permission Part of the EU funding was to be allocated to a documentary film aimed at encouraging political participation in Egypt. The documentary's script, which suggested that parliamentary elections are regularly rigged, is part of the evidence prosecutors are using to prove the charge of tarnishing the country's image against Ibrahim. The documentary's scriptwriter, Ali Salem, was among the defence witnesses. To show that the film only aimed at encouraging people to cast their votes during election time, he read excerpts of the script he had written for the film during the hearing. He said he was fully responsible for the script's content. The court adjourned until 25 May. Ibrahim, who holds dual Egyptian-American nationality, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment by a state security court. Twenty-seven of his associates received terms ranging between a one-year suspended prison sentence and five years. After serving almost eight months in prison, Egypt's top appeals court ordered a retrial in February on the grounds that the first case had failed to examine properly the prosecutor's evidence and the defence's arguments.
