Crime without culprits?

By Khaled Dawoud and Jailan Halawi
The general-prosecutor's office announced on Sunday that it was "studying the court's report explaining the reasons for the sentences it handed down [on 5 February] in Al-Kosheh case, in preparation for contesting these with the Court of Cassation, [the highest court of appeal in the land]."
The criminal court in Sohag had acquitted nearly all 96 defendants who were blamed for some of the country's worst sectarian riots in decades which occurred in the village of Al-Kosheh in southern Egypt a year ago. Only four defendants received jail terms ranging between one and 10 years, and none was convicted of premeditated murder.
Following a spate of false rumours circulating in the village amidst already tense relations between the two confessional groups, clashes erupted on 2 January 2000 resulting in the deaths of 20 Coptic Christians and one Muslim.
The sentences stunned most observers in view of the gravity of the crimes and the large number of those killed. The Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III, expressed displeasure with the ruling at a public seminar held at the Cairo Book Fair last week, saying that the Church was considering filing an appeal. Expatriate Coptic groups in the United States and Canada, known for their strong objections to the government's handling of relations with Christians, also unleashed a fresh campaign in the international press, claiming that Egyptian courts gave Muslims licence to kill Christians and escape unpunished.
However, spokesmen for local human rights groups were the first to rush to defend the court's ruling, and affirm that it had no political or sectarian implications. "On the contrary," said secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, Hafez Abu-Se'eda, "the sentences prove the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and its long-enshrined tradition of protecting the rights of defendants."
Citing the court's report explaining the reasons for the sentences, Abu-Se'eda said that lack of evidence and the arbitrary arrests which took place following the clashes made it impossible for judges to hand down harsh sentences.
In its report, the court, headed by Judge Mohamed Afifi, said that "it had doubts concerning the accusations made against the defendants, and whether they were the actual perpetrators." It added that the papers submitted to it "lacked conclusive material evidence that would satisfy the court that any of the defendants committed the crimes of which he is accused."
The prosecutors, said the court, also excluded the names of certain suspects accused by eyewitnesses of taking part in the riots "without any justification and contrary to existing laws." None of the defendants was caught red-handed, and most arrests were made days after the actual incidents took place "despite the heavy local police presence at the time of the events. No weapons or other tools used in the crimes were seized, and neither were the goods which the defendants were accused of stealing," said the court's report. It added that most of the accusations were based on circumstantial evidence, and noted that investigators even ignored the fact that some witnesses made accusations against people who were said to have been at more than one place at the same time.
During a visit by Al-Ahram Weekly to Al-Kosheh shortly after the clashes, Muslims and Christians recounted different versions of how the clashes started and who took part in them. Villagers would repeat a certain story and insist that they were sure of what they were saying, despite admitting later that some of them were not even in Al-Kosheh at the time of the clashes. Taking the stories of their families or friends for granted, they would accuse certain persons of carrying out the killings. The atmosphere was chaotic indeed, and this did not escape the court's attention. Muslim families advanced an even more incredible version, insisting that all the killed Christians were gunned down by their own fire while shooting at Muslims.
Prosecutors did not swallow this, and all 38 defendants accused, and cleared, of murder were Muslims.
Diaa Rashwan, the managing editor of the annual State of Religion Report issued by Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, pointed out that Al-Kosheh's sentences were not unprecedented. He said that there were several cases in the past in which militants were accused of assassinating top officials, but were acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
The best known case of this type is that of the late Parliament Speaker Rifaat Al-Mahgoub who was gunned down by suspected Gama'a Islamiya militants in 1990. After facing a trial that lasted for years, a group of leading Gama'a militants were found innocent due to insufficient evidence. Another reason for their acquittal was that the court suspected that the "confessions" they made had been extracted from them by torture. Such sentences, said Rashwan, "confirm the independence of the judiciary, and that it does not take political considerations into account before handing down rulings."
In cases like Al-Kosheh, convicted defendants and the general-prosecutor's office are the two parties entitled to appeal the sentences. The convicted defendants exercise the right of appeal if they believe the sentences are too harsh, while the general-prosecutor's office may seek a retrial if it believes the sentences are too lenient and that the court did not take into consideration certain evidence that might have resulted in harsher sentences.
Yet, for someone like Bishop Wissa of the Al-Kosheh church, who was blamed by the court for inciting Christians, justice means that the actual killers should be found, put on trial and given appropriate punishment.
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