CAIRO: Human rights activists who are facing criminal charges brought by a judge have condemned the “fabricated” case against them. Ahmed Seif El-Islam Hamad and Gamal Eid, directors of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC) and Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) respectively have been charged with libel, blackmail and misuse of communications. Blogger Amr Gharbeia has been charged with libel and misuse of communications. Blackmail and misuse of communications are punishable with custodial sentences. The case was filed in 2007 by judge Abdel-Fatah Murad. Eid explained to Daily News Egypt that since Murad filed the current case against him, Hamad and Gharbeia three years ago it has been going back and forth between the public prosecutor and three public prosecution offices all of which declined to press charges, until the Khalifa prosecution office. This is the third time that Murad has targeted Hamad, Eid and Gharbeia with legal action. In 2007 he filed charges of libel against the three men after ANHRI revealed that Murad had plagiarized 50 pages of an ANHRI report on internet freedom in his book, “Scientific and Legal Principles of Blogs.” Gharbeia wrote a review of Murad's book on his blog, “Hawleyaat saheb el ashgar” [Arboreal Annals] and was called in for questioning by the North Cairo Prosecution Office over two comments left on the blog post. Murad also filed a case the same year demanding that 51 human rights and news websites — including ANHRI's and HMLC's websites and Gharbeia's blog — be banned. Cairo's administrative court threw out the case in December 2007. Murad had also brought charges of libel against bloggers Alaa Abdel-Fatah and Manal Baheyeddin Hassan, owners of the Manalaa.net blog in the same year. The two were acquitted at first instance. The current charges, which will be heard by the Khalifa misdemeanors court on Saturday, relate to the press statement published by ANHRI on its website in February 2007 that accuses Murad of plagiarism. In a statement published Thursday, HMLC said that the timing of the case “may be a prelude to arbitrary policies against activists and human rights organizations, to coincide with the renewal of the state of emergency and preparations for the Shoura and Presidential elections.” The HMLC statement notes that Nasser Amin, director of the Arab Center for the Independent of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession was recently summoned for questioning about statements he made relating to the appointment of women judges to the State Council. Eid told Daily News Egypt that the fact that the public prosecution office has not brought charges in the plagiarism case filed by Eid against Murad in 2007, as well as the public prosecutor's adding of additional charges to those brought by Murad against Eid, Hamad and Gharbeia reveal a “clear bias.” “If the law actually ruled in Egypt, the public prosecutor would not have hesitated to reveal the truth [about the plagiarism charges] through a fair and transparent investigation and announced its findings,” ANHRI says in a statement published Wednesday. “Instead the judge feels free to fabricate cases avenging our exposing of his attack on our intellectual property rights and his reproduction of our material in a commercial book.”
