All hail the great Egyptian judiciary that recently released prominent businessman Hossam Aboul Fotouh after he completed a five-year prison term, plus an extra eight months thrown in for good measure just to prove the diligence of our venerable judiciary and related institutions. Five years and eight months is indeed a very long time in which we followed many cases that vouch for our great judiciary ranging from the acquittal of the ill-fated Red Sea ferry's owner, whose victims exceeded 1000, to the convictions that were never implemented against officials responsible for other crises that have befallen us over the years which Aboul Fotouh spent behind bars. Aboul Fotouh was jailed for the possession of unlicensed weapons. Those who know him know well that he liked to go hunting. He was caught with 12 hunting rifles which were all licensed except for one that he had just bought and hadn't yet registered. In such cases, the accused is usually handed down a deferred six-month sentence, but in Aboul Fotouh's case, the state security court in place in accordance with emergency law acquitted Aboul Fotouh altogether in a verdict that was supposed to be endorsed by the prime minister as the representative of the president. I'd like to raise my hat to then Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, who naturally didn't like the verdict which he referred back to the State Security Court which came up with a better ruling: Aboul Fotouh wasn't given a deferred six-month jail term, but a five-year term to be effective immediately according to the mind-boggling emergency law we've been trying to cancel for years, with the government assuring us that it only applies to terrorists and drug dealers. Thus we have proven to our foes before our friends that our judiciary - and by that I mean the branch of it that is under the jurisdiction of state security in light of the emergency law - does not take orders from anyone, no matter how high up he is in the executive. Moreover the judiciary is blind to the status of the accused, indeed treating a businessman who enjoys the sport of hunting the same way it treats drug lords and terrorists, sometimes even giving tougher sentences to the former. As for his debt, the court found out (after six years) that he had already paid off LE 1 billion of it, stating (after six years) that there was a difference between extortion and debt deferment. For this I raise my hat too, albeit after six years. As for the character assassination to which Hossam Aboul Fotouh was subjected alongside his jail term, for this I raise my hat to institutions other than the judiciary. They surely deserve credit for using the latest communications technology from the internet to CDs to make copies of most private material allegedly found during the raid of a Maadi villa Aboul Fotouh was renting at the time. No one however told us how these copies reached the masses as they were sold by newsagents on Cairo's sidewalks despite the fact that they were part of the evidence in the case. My last applause goes once more to the judiciary whose Court of Cassation (after all these long years) ruled that the original raid on the villa during which all the exhibits in the case (including the unlicensed hunting rifle) were apprehended, was illegal and hence the entire case was null and void. It took years for this ruling to emerge; years Aboul Fotouh spent behind bars away from his home and his family, deprived of his freedom and the ability to run his business to pay off his debts. If he was living in any of the other civilized countries, where there is no rule of law and no state of emergency, Aboul Fotouh would not have had to pay back a single penny of his bank loans because the compensation he would have received for damages and harm incurred on all levels through the past six years would have been enough to pay off not only his debt but that of all of Egypt's businessmen. But we must remember that we live in a country boasting a respectable and stringent emergency law that is only applied to terrorists and drug lords, and in the case of ordinary citizens, they throw in a bit of character assassination before serving. Thank God for that and thank God for your safe return, Hossam. Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writers' Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
