Taha ruling overturned THE HELIOPOLIS Court of Appeals has overturned a six-month prison sentence passed against Doha-based Al-Jazeera producer Howaida Taha who was arrested for possessing documentary tapes on torture in police stations in Egypt. The court on Monday overruled the charge of tarnishing Egypt's image and national interests. However, Taha was ordered to pay a LE20,000 fine. Taha was arrested in January 2007 at Cairo Airport while en route to Doha after shooting the documentary, which included recordings of incidents of torture and reconstructed torture scenes using actors. The conviction was "for possessing videotapes, with the aim of distributing and broadcasting them, which included events contrary to reality about torture in Egypt, and which are likely to damage the reputation of the country abroad." Al-Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief Hussein Abdel-Ghani declined to comment on the verdict but said threats of imprisonment and fines were like a sword hanging over the freedom of the press in Egypt. "Any just judge, any responsible authority that respects the freedom of the press must abolish these punishments," Abdel-Ghani said. Al-Jazeera started work on the documentary after footage of abuse and torture in police stations were aired several times last year. Taha was arrested two weeks ago in a Giza town while shooting another documentary about limited income families on the pretext she had not obtained permission from the Interior Ministry. However, the Imbaba prosecution ordered her release. "An investigation by prosecutors showed I received permission from the Arts Censorship Authority before starting the documentary which sheds light on the life of the marginalised sectors of Egyptian society," Taha told Al-Ahram Weekly. Bar elections annulled THE ADMINISTRATIVE Court has ruled that results of the Bar Association's elections in February 2005 were null and void, reports Mona El-Nahhas. Sunday's ruling annulled election results announced at the time by the chief justice of Cairo Southern Court in his capacity as chairman of the judicial committee in charge of supervising syndicates elections. The 2005 elections resulted in Nasserist lawyer Sameh Ashour taking the post of syndicate council chairman. Although collecting around two-thirds of council seats, members of the Muslim Brotherhood contested the authenticity of the results, claiming that the elections were rigged in favour of Ashour. The MB claims the state placed Ashour in the post to serve its interests and undermine the Bar Association, regarded as the fortress of freedom. In their lawsuit filed immediately after elections results were announced, the MB called for abolishing the 2005 elections, claiming that vote counting was fraud. The ruling, which took three years to pass, states the existing syndicate council should be dissolved. The judicial committee has set a date for holding new syndicate elections. The law organising elections at professional syndicates stipulates that the syndicate chairman has no right to nominate himself for the chairmanship seat if he has occupied the post for two successive terms. Consequently, Ashour, who has served as syndicate chairman for two consecutive terms in 2001 and 2005 is allowed to run in the next elections and compete for the office again after the ruling dropped his second term. Internet cables restored REPAIRS on two of three broken undersea cables which disconnected the Internet in much of the Middle East all the way to South Asia were completed by early Monday morning. The third should be fixed by 16 February. The two undersea cable connections, owned by FLAG Telecom and the SEA-ME-WE-4, which is owned by a consortium of 16 telecommunications companies, were disrupted off Egypt's north coast two weeks ago when segments of two international cables were cut, causing partial disorder for up to 70 per cent of the country's Internet services, thus forcing service providers to reroute traffic. A third undersea cable, FALCON, was later reported broken between Dubai and Oman. According to Amr Badawi of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, repair work on a section of the FLAG Europe-Asia cable between Egypt and Italy and on the FALCON cable system which began on 5 February ended on 10 February. The SEA-ME-WE 4, the second cable cut near Egypt, was repaired two days later. The first cable was severed by a ship's anchor. "There are lots of minor technical problems that still need to be fixed but this will not affect the Internet service," Badawi said.
