Seeking redemption

Lawyers of prominent human rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim expressed concern over the cursory procedures that characterised their client's retrial. Khaled Dawoud reports
The scene at the opening of the retrial of Professor Saadeddin Ibrahim, a prominent human rights activist and sociology professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC), was highly reminiscent of the first trial.
Ibrahim, who also directs the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Developmental Studies and holds dual Egyptian-American nationality, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in late May last year. The State Security Court in which he was tried, convicted him of violating military Decree No.4 which bans individuals or groups from receiving foreign funding without receiving prior government approval. The sentence against Ibrahim triggered an international uproar and received widespread coverage by the foreign media. It was also condemned by local human rights and civil society groups.
Twenty-seven other defendants, mostly Ibn Khaldun employees, received terms ranging between a one-year suspended prison term and five years. In early February, having spent over eight months in Tora prison, the country's highest of appeal, the Court of Cassation, noted several procedural errors in the May ruling and ordered a retrial.
When the retrial opened at the Bab Al-Khalq court in downtown Cairo on Saturday, trucks loaded with policemen in full riot gear guarded the courthouse's entrance. European, American and Canadian diplomats as well as representatives of international human rights groups crowded the courtroom but only a few local human rights activists were present. They have understood Ibrahim's case as a warning of what the accepted limits to their activities are and what the repercussions will be should they try cross certain "red lines".
The $250,000 grant which Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Centre received from the European Union was meant to fund a project aimed at encouraging Egyptians to take part in the 2000 parliamentary elections. However, the state security prosecution accused him of misleading the donors and misappropriating their money in addition to the charge that he illegally received money without government permission.
According to the state prosecutor, the Ibn Khaldun Centre provided the EU with false documents and claimed that they managed to register thousands of voters and faked bills to justify the expenses. Ibrahim and the other defendants denied the charges. The prosecution's case was further upset when the EU provided the court with an official document which vehemently refuted that Ibrahim violated the funding agreement signed with him. In the document, the EU argues that the contractual agreement between it and Ibrahim's centre were part of bilateral as well as regional agreements with the Egyptian government. The EU, according to these agreements, is entitled to support non- governmental organisations in the field of civil and democratic rights, the document said.
"It is really strange that the government is more concerned at safeguarding the EU's money than the EU itself," said Khaled Fayad, the director of the election project and the recipient of a two-year prison sentence. "What about all the money businessmen embezzle from banks and then flee abroad with? Isn't this a phenomenon that deserves to receive more government attention than human rights groups receiving foreign funding?" he added.
As in the first trial, which lasted six months, Ibrahim and a few other defendants arrived at the court early, not knowing exactly when the judge would start his deliberations and whether that would be before or after he had looked into the cases of nearly a dozen criminal suspects locked and handcuffed inside the court's cage.
The 63-year-old professor reiterated to reporters his "optimistic outlook" which, he said, is second nature in any human rights activist's character. However, for those who have known the man for years, it was evident that Ibrahim, having spent more than eight months in prison, looked fail and visibly exhausted.
Ibrahim, whose lawyers' requests to allow him to leave the country for medical treatment in the United States, said "My health is deteriorating." Ibrahim now uses a stick when walking and told the Weekly that, following a series of strokes, he has serious problems in walking or writing "though my morale is very high." He vehemently denied that he was counting on US pressure to avoid being sent to prison again. "I never sought the help of anybody, in the US or otherwise. I only asked for the support of local and international human rights groups."
The head of Ibrahim's team of lawyers, Ibrahim Saleh, did not deny that he was surprised by the speed with which a date for the retrial was set. "Though there are generally no hard- and-fast rules, in other cases when the Court of Cassation ordered a retrial, there was usually an average of four to five months before the new trial started," Saleh said. In Ibrahim's case, however, the retrial started just two months later. Ibrahim expressed the same concern saying that he and other defendants have "hardly had the time to catch [their] breath."
Presiding judge Adel Abdel-Salam rejected a request by Saleh to postpone the hearings for at least another three months in order to give lawyers more time to file their pleas before the Constitutional Court which contest the constitutionality of military Decree No.4. Although Ibrahim's lawyers asked the judge for a reasonable period of time to prepare their new defence they were given only 48 hours before the process of hearing the prosecution's witnesses began.
Saleh did say, however, that the judge agreed to listen to the defence witnesses again. They will aim at convincing the court that Ibrahim is a human rights figure who deserves respect rather than imprisonment. The defence witnesses who testified during the first trial were all prominent intellectuals who worked with Ibrahim for years in joint projects. Many of them are also responsible for running human rights and research centres which, like Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Centre, depend on foreign grants for their survival.
Abdel-Qader Hashem, another lawyer representing Ibrahim, questioned why the charge sheet included specific individuals while neglecting others who were also involved in the election project. According to the prosecutors, part of the European funding was allocated to a documentary film aimed at boosting electoral awareness. That film, prosecutors said, damaged Egypt's reputation because it claimed that all elections in Egypt are rigged by the government. Yet, neither the scriptwriter nor the director were among the defendants.
Furthermore, the director of another group to which EU money was channelled and which encourages women to vote, was also missing from the roll-call of defendants.
The state security officer who carried out the investigation and arrests, Major Nasser Mohieddin, was the only witness to appear on the stand on Monday. He was showered with questions from Ibrahim's lawyers in a cross- examination that lasted nearly three hours. The judge rejected many of the questions because of their political nature and the fact that they were clearly asked for the benefit of the journalists covering the trial.
Mohieddin, who sweated throughout the encounter, was asked what his opinion was of a statement made by President Hosni Mubarak in which he stated that the "2000 elections were the fairest in recent years." The implication was that previous elections had not been as fair, a claim that Ibrahim and other human rights groups have been making for years. Hashem also showed the state security officer a copy of an independent weekly, Al-Osbou', whose main headline was "The prime minister must be fired for rigging local elections," and asked him for his point of view. The judge rejected both questions.
Mohieddin's answers to most questions quoted secret sources whom he claimed he could not reveal or referred lawyers to the prosecutors who prepared the charge sheet. But he repeatedly emphasised that Ibrahim deliberately sought to damage Egypt's reputation and that of its government by issuing reports claiming that elections are rigged, human rights violated and the country's Coptic Christians discriminated against.
The ongoing Israeli campaign against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has detracted from the attention that surrounded the trial before. It was not surprising then that the defendants issued on Monday a collective statement condemning Israeli actions and calling for a boycott of US and Israeli products. The trial will resume today when the prosecution calls more of its witnesses to the stand.
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