The state versus Ibrahim

By Khaled Dawoud
After three consecutive days of hearings, the State Security Prosecution concluded on Monday its case against Saadeddin Ibrahim, a prominent NGO figure and sociology professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC), describing him and 27 other defendants on trial as "criminals ready to sell their nation and people for money." Despite Ibrahim's repeated denials of the charges, prosecutors have demanded a 15-year sentence for him.
Ibrahim is director of the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Developmental Studies, which has been active for the past 12 years on issues related to democracy, human rights and minorities in the Arab world. Arrested in late June and released on bail 40 days later, he was charged with receiving $240,000 from the European Union (or European Commission as Ibrahim insists) without government permission to fund two projects for promoting political awareness and participation in national elections. Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahid decided in October to put all 28 defendants on trial before a state security court.
Ibrahim has claimed that there were other "reasons" for his arrest. He alleged that authorities were unhappy with his involvement in a planned NGO project to monitor the recent parliamentary elections and by reports he issued on the status of Coptic Christians.
Ibrahim smiled briefly as he stood in an iron cage at the Bab Al-Khalq Court when State Security Prosecutor Ashraf Hilal described him as a "genius". But the smile quickly faded when he was accused by the prosecutor of "using his intelligence to jeopardise this country's stability and sow the seeds of disunity." The prosecutor added that "under the banner of the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Developmental Studies, these criminals falsified facts, fabricated reports and circulated rumours and allegations intended to harm the country's good name. Their only loyalty went to money and not to the country in which they were raised and lived. To amass more money, the first defendant [Ibrahim] committed all sorts of crimes, including forgery, bribery and fraud."
One of Ibrahim's lawyers strongly protested, declaring that describing Ibrahim as a criminal ahead of possible conviction amounted to libel and slander.
Prosecutors told the court that receiving donations from a foreign party without permission from the Ministry of Social Affairs violated a military decree issued in 1992. But the decree was never invoked in court previously. In 1999, police arrested secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), Hafez Abu-Se'eda, and accused him of violating the same decree by accepting funds from the British embassy to finance a human rights project. But the charges were later dropped and Abu-Se'eda was not put on trial.
To refute claims by Ibrahim's lawyers that the decree concerned civil associations only and not the Ibn Khaldoun Centre, which is registered as a civil company, chief prosecutor Sameh Seif said the decree did not make distinctions but prohibited all individuals and institutions from receiving foreign funds without government permission. Ibrahim's lawyers argued that the Ibn Khaldoun Centre has been receiving foreign donations for the past 12 years, without encountering any objections from the government.
Seif charged that Ibrahim, binded by a bilateral contract with the EU to recruit new voters, had assigned a number of the defendants to fake voting cards -- a prerequisite for casting ballots -- and presented them to the EU as evidence that the centre was doing its job. For each voting card, Ibrahim charged the EU LE6, while paying workers on the ground only LE1, the prosecutor claimed. Hundreds of these allegedly faked voting cards were seized from Ibrahim's house on the day of his arrest on 30 June.
Prosecutors also charged Ibrahim with presenting the EU with false budgets. To give an example, the prosecutor said Ibrahim would claim that coordinators and employees working on a project received a monthly salary of LE1,200 each, while each was actually paid LE400. And to produce a documentary encouraging political participation, Ibrahim would charge the EU $20,000 while he actually paid the producing company less than half of that amount. The script of the documentary -- which alleges that parliamentary elections are regularly rigged -- is part of the evidence prosecutors are using to gain Ibrahim's conviction for "tarnishing the country's image".
In response to Ibrahim's lawyers' contention that the EU did not make any complaints against the centre for misuse of funds, the chief prosecutor said this was not necessary for initiating the case against the defendants. The fact that investigators found out these irregularities, he said, was enough for the state to charge Ibrahim with fraud.
Adding to the excitement, the prosecution also accused Ibrahim of approving the payment of "bribes" to 16 employees at the state-run Radio and Television Union to support the goals of the political participation project. Again, Ibrahim denied the allegations.
Turning to the charge of spreading false rumours and lies about the domestic situation, prosecutor Seif revealed for the first time a document in the form of a letter sent by Ibrahim to a Protestant group in Germany suggesting a study on Muslim-Coptic educational discrimination. In the letter, Ibrahim allegedly wrote that Coptic Christians "have suffered oppression since the Islamic invasion of Egypt in 641 AD." But Ibrahim told Al-Ahram Weekly that the letter was mistranslated and that what he actually wrote alluded to the "Islamic conquest of Egypt, and not invasion."
Prosecutor Seif also said that "people such as the defendant" were behind the promotion of sectarian problems in the country, citing the case of the Upper Egyptian village of Al-Kosheh where 20 Christians and one Muslim were killed in riots over a year ago. He said that while prosecutors investigating the case established that the riots began as a fight between a Christian merchant and a Muslim customer, "people like Saadeddin Ibrahim were sitting in their homes concocting allegations about discrimination and sectarian strife."
One of the defendants, Magda El-Beih, was accused of bribing a policeman at the Nile Delta town of Menouf to provide her with certificates claiming that she had managed to register more than 4,000 new voters on her own. For this purpose, the policeman allegedly stole an official stamp and forged the signatures of senior officers. In return for her role in registering this large number of voters, El-Beih allegedly received LE10,800. She was said to have paid the policeman LE350.
Chief-Judge Mohamed Shalabi adjourned hearings until 14 April to give lawyers time to prepare their defence. He also rejected a demand, made repeatedly by the defence team, to lift a travel ban imposed on Ibrahim.
Ibrahim Saleh, one of five lawyers defending Ibrahim, said he was not worried by the prosecutor's allegations and that he had refuting evidence. Ibrahim also told the Weekly there were "canyons, not only loopholes, in the prosecutor's presentation."
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