CAIRO: Novelist Alaa al-Aswani on Thursday joined a number of human rights activists and relatives of the October 9 Maspero attack victims in launching a call on civilians to refuse to appear before the military prosecutor. The call by the No Military Trials for Civilians group said that the decision by activists Alaa Abdel Fattah and Bahaa Saber to refuse to cooperate with the military prosecutor was “an appropriate escalation after the passage of so long a time and the failure of all other avenues of protest.” Fattah and Saber had been summonsed by the military prosecutor investigating the deaths of demonstrators outside the Egyptian Television building at Maspero on 9 October. Along with other protestors, they face charges of inciting violence against the armed forces and, in Fattah's case, of seizing military weapons. Fattah remains in military detention. Speakers at the press conference included Bahaa Saber, human rights lawyer Khalid Ali, Coptic priest Filobatir, who is one of Abdel Fattah's co-accused, and relatives of two of the protestors killed at Maspero. The group's spokesperson Rasha Azab said that several political groups, including the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Front Party's youth organization, and the Revolutionary Socialists, had also signed the document and pledged that their members would refuse to appear if summoned before military prosecutors. Speaking to the mixed audience of media and activists, Aswani launched a scathing attack on the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, saying that “the old apparatuses of repression are still in place … and now there is also a new repressive apparatus called the military police.” He accused the military police of acting “only in two sets of circumstances – either to repress the revolutionaries or to rescue the people of the Mubarak regime.” Aswani called on “all political forces and ordinary citizens” to unite around the demands for an end to military trials and the emergency law, the release of all those in military prisons, and the punishment of “the crimes of the military police,” adding that “what makes people angry is knowing that this is not an army of occupation. If it was, we would understand why it's behaving like this.” He called for an end to military rule, saying that the “repressive apparatuses which think that by redoubling repression they can return Egypt to 24 January” are “deluded.” Khalid Ali, speaking on behalf of a new coalition of civil society organizations called the Front for the Defence of Egyptian Demonstrators, asked: “Has the baltagiyya [thugs] been rid of? Has security returned? What are the results of the state of emergency? The state of emergency and the military trials are just a weapon in the hands of the military to continue to oppress the people, rob them of their dignity and oppress the revolutionaries.” Ali also welcomed the National Council for Human Rights report on the Maspero killings, saying that some colleagues had “rushed to judgement” on it. He stressed the importance of the report's confirmation that the demonstrators had been subject to two attacks, that the army had attacked the demonstrators first and not vice versa, and that the army had run down and crushed at least twelve civilians. Above all, the report had recognized that “those who killed Egyptian civilians are now the Egyptian armed forces.” It confirmed the need for an independent inquiry. Ali's support for the report was echoed by Filobatir, who said the report was objective, and if it was followed up objectively there was no doubt that the commander of the military police would be prosecuted. He condemned the nomination of the Minister for Justice to head the investigating committee, saying it should be headed by an independent legal figure. Two relatives of the victims of Maspero also spoke at the press conference. Mary Daniel, the sister of Mina Daniel, recounted hearing that her dead brother was listed as the first suspect by the military prosecutor. “How could this be? It's a strange thing. How could you kill someone, try to silence him, and then accuse him as well? These are absurdities, to be honest … If they were trying to silence Mina, a million Minas will spring up behind Mina, calling for justice, and they won't be silenced,” she said. Vivienne Magdy, whose fiancée Michael Masud was crushed to death by an armoured car at Maspero, said she regretted having given evidence to the military investigation into Maspero: “I went to the military prosecutor's office, regrettably … I went to give my evidence, to say that the armoured cars that ran down Mike, that ran down the martyrs … had soldiers in them … the automatic weapons on the armored cars weren't being fired into the air … they were being fired at the people who had set out to seek their rights in a peaceful march …” but, she continued, “when I went to the military prosecutor, we heard that the army's weapons had been seized by the thugs. It was a farce, there's no other word. I insisted twice or three times that it was the army that had done that. I now apologize for having gone to the military prosecutor, because it's not the military prosecutor who will vindicate Mike. The civilians will vindicate him.” In a separate development, the No Military Trials for Civilian Groups also launched a call for a day of international action on November 12 in solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. In a statement on the English version of their website, they suggested to the Occupy and Decolonize movements that they take actions targeting Egyptian embassies demanding the release of civilians imprisoned by military courts. A statement of solidarity received from the Occupy London protest group was also published on the website. BM
