The new administration of President Mohamed Morsi should take urgent steps to address sectarian violence. The administration should ensure that those responsible for the violence are identified, investigated, and prosecuted in courts that meet international fair trial standards and order a retrial of those sentenced by discredited emergency law courts. Under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took power after former president Mubarak's ouster in February 2011, Egypt has had at least 12 incidents of serious sectarian violence, which has left numerous homes and shops destroyed and at least 25 people dead. Only two cases have resulted in prosecutions, but prosecutors referred the cases to Emergency State Security Courts, which were notorious for failing to meet minimum due process standards and whose verdicts cannot be appealed. Other cases were handled with so-called reconciliation meetings, which did not result in justice, Human Rights Watch said. “Sectarian tensions in Egypt have long been punctuated by outbursts of criminal violence, yet time and again authorities fail to prosecute or punish those responsible," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Putting an end to sectarian violence means prosecuting those responsible and making sure that the outcome is fair." In October 2011, Human Rights Watch documented three serious attacks on Christians in which prosecutors declined to investigate suspected arsonists, looters, and assailants. Those episodes – in Atfih, Muqattam, and Marinab – have yet to be investigated. In the few instances in which the government has prosecuted suspects, authorities have used emergency courts, where defendants can't get a fair trial and there is no right of appeal of even the most questionable verdict, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch has found in monitoring trials before Emergency State Security Courts that the judges routinely fail to investigate allegations of torture properly, accept confessions obtained under torture, and do not allow defendants adequate access to lawyers outside the courtroom. With the May 31, 2012 expiry of the state of emergency, the public prosecutor can no longer refer cases to these courts. The new president should ensure a system is in place to speedily review and quash all verdicts issued after unfair trails, including all verdicts issued by emergency courts, Human Rights Watch said. The use of so-called reconciliation meetings in lieu of prosecutions following violent attacks has allowed those responsible to escape justice and has even led to the forcible eviction of victims from their homes, Human Rights Watch said. Not only have such reconciliation talks failed to calm repeated outbreaks of sectarian tension, but they have provided a cover for impunity for perpetrators of violence. Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's mostly Sunni Muslim population. In a study issued in April 2010, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an Egyptian human rights group, documented over 50 cases of sectarian Muslim-Christian violence over a two-year period, mostly cases in which Muslims attacked Christians for practicing religious rites or punished them collectively for a real or imagined offense involving a Muslim woman or a perceived insult to Islam. Among the flashpoints have been Muslim objections to Christian church construction, which is subject to discriminatory regulations requiring presidential approval. Egyptian authorities should act quickly to put in place non-discriminatory regulations for construction of places of worship. The government should ensure that prosecutors investigate and prosecute without discrimination those responsible for religious-based violence, whether the victims are Christian or Muslim, and provide adequate protection for residents who wish to remain in their homes. Given the pattern of impunity and the failure to investigate effectively, the public prosecutor should personally supervise the conduct of such investigations to ensure those responsible are brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said. In one of the two cases in which prosecutors brought charges, on May 21, 2012, an Emergency State Security Court in the southern city of Minya sentenced 12 Christians to life in prison and acquitted 8 Muslim defendants who had been charged in connection with clashes between Muslims and Christians a year earlier in the nearby towns of Abu Qurqas and al-Fekria. The violence left two Muslims dead, scores of Christian shops and homes torched, and several Muslims and Christians wounded. Morsi should refuse to ratify the verdict in the Abu Qurqas case and all other rulings by the emergency security courts and order a retrial, Human Rights Watch said. The public prosecutor should order a new investigation in the case and bring the resulting prosecutions before a regular civilian court that meets international fair trial standards. The second case involves the prosecution of suspects following a May 2011 riot in the Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba in which Muslim residents assaulted two churches and triggered clashes that left more than 13 people dead and hundreds injured. In April 2012, the judge ordered the release of all defendants pending a ruling from the Supreme Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of the Emergency Law article 19 which states that Emergency State Security Courts will remain the competent courts for all trials referred during the state of emergency. On May 31 the state of emergency expired in Egypt, ending the public prosecutor's authority to refer cases to Emergency State Security Courts. The prosecutor referred at least six cases in 2011 and 2012 to these courts, and two other trials were ongoing from before 2011. On June 9 the public prosecutor ordered the transfer of cases referred to emergency courts after January 25, 2012, to regular civilian courts but did not do so for cases referred before that date. Some of the cases of sectarian violence have resulted in the so-called reconciliation meetings. The EIPR has documented the use of such meetings over a period of years in areas of Egypt still dominated by tribal relations. Local or religious leaders conduct the meetings, determine a political settlement and enforce it, sometimes with the assistance of the police. These “settlements" sometimes include instructing families to leave their homes. In one case handled with such a meeting, in January, several hundred Muslim residents torched and looted homes and properties of Christian villagers in Sharbat, a town near Alexandria, following unsourced rumors that a Christian man had images of a Muslim woman on his mobile phone. The attacks damaged six homes and six shops. Lawyers and residents confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the police had not pursued five suspects identified in a January 28 police report reviewed by Human Rights Watch. Police and Muslim religious leaders oversaw an informal reconciliation meeting on February 1 that endorsed evicting eight Christian families from the village and the sale of their property. The eviction and forced sale were carried out under the authority of the local religious leaders and the police. Five of the families have since returned to their homes after other religious leaders intervened. Human Rights Watch called on the authorities to ensure that everyone illegally evicted has their property returned to them and is compensated for their illegal evictions, and that any police or state official involved in illegal evictions is disciplined. The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a party, obligate states to provide effective legal remedies for human rights violations and to protect the right to security in a non-discriminatory manner. The African Charter also protects the right to property. This requires authorities to open prompt and impartial criminal investigations into serious crimes of violence and hold those responsible accountable under the law. The same requirement exists under Egyptian law, which prohibits the use of reconciliation agreements in cases in which serious crimes are allegedly committed.
