CAIRO: A Cairo misdemeanor court of appeals has sentence 21-year-old blogger Ahmed Doma to three months in prison after he was convicted of assaulting police officers during a demonstration on May 3. Rights groups and activists are angered over the ruling, especially considering the widespread reports of police violence and “systematic” torture of citizens. Doma was initially sentenced to 6 months in jail over the alleged attack on police officers, but the appeals court reduced the sentence to three months on his lawyers appeal. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Doma participated in an anti-government demonstration in May that called for an end to the emergency laws – Draconian measures that can detain citizens for a number of violations, including demonstrating – and greater democracy. The initial court had ruled that Doma had assaulted officers at the demonstration. “The verdict on Ahmed Doma is a clear message from the persistent Egyptian government to oppress advocates for democracy,” the ANHRI said in a press statement on Thursday. “A message, which is delivered by violence, fabricating cases or adopting police measures as a prime resort to [the] crackdown on protesters and those who would not compromise their right to a state free of emergency law, corruption and torture,” the statement added. For activists and rights groups, the sentence is yet another sign that the Egyptian government is not backing down against activists and in some views is using the court system to put innocent citizens behind bars. “What we are witnessing is a crime against citizenship,” said prominent human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif al-Islam of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center in Cairo. He believes the government will use “any means necessary” to put “agitators behind bars.” ANHRI agrees, saying that “despite the contradictions in the statements of officers and witnesses and the obvious fabrication of charges against the blogger prisoner, the court issued its previous ruling as an assault on police officers, not an assault by the police on demonstrators, among whom were members of Parliament, public figures and political figures who have exercised their right and marched to express resentment to the continuation of martial law and the oppressive rule in Egypt.” Doma himself knows the heavy hand of the Egyptian courts all too well. He had been out of jail for only three month before this verdict will see him return to a place behind bars. In early 2009, the blogger was accused of crossing into Gaza and participating in solidarity with Palestinians during the Israeli assault in December 2008/January 2009. He was convicted by a military court and was only released three months ago, the ANHRI said. ”The prison sentence against Ahmed Doma is a new condemnation of the emergency state and torture in Egypt,” the ANHRI statement said. “The sentence is a new crime added to the many crimes committed by the government against callers for democracy. A day will come when this government will be tried for their crimes, with a slight difference that it will be a fair trial, not like their tribunal charades,” it added. Over the past few years, media reporting from demonstrations have revealed police violence in abundance against activists, with dozens of protesters routinely arrested at each demonstration. “It is absurd that the police are now claiming to be victims after being the ones who hit and beat protesters at every demonstration it seems,” said 23-year-old activist Tariq Amr. With Doma behind bars, popular resentment over the murder of Khaled Said by a police officer in Alexandria and a stalled reform movement, the Egyptian opposition continues to meet wall upon wall put up by the Egyptian government resistant to change. BM
