In letters sent today to President
Mubarak and Prosecutor General Maher `Abd al-Wahed, Human Rights
Watch urged them to release engineer Ashraf Ibrahim from detention
and to halt politically motivated legal proceedings against him and
four others. The charges against Ibrahim include “communicating with
foreign human rights organizations.”
“These charges testify to the poor state of political freedoms in
Egypt today,” said Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and
North Africa Division. “The emergency laws under which these men
were charged are so broad and vague that they allow the government
to criminalize virtually any manner of political dissent at will.”
The five activists are charged with spreading false information
about Egypt abroad and membership in a banned “revolutionary
socialist group.” The indictment also accuses Ibrahim of “sending
false information to foreign bodies—foreign human rights
organizations—which include, contrary to the truth, violations of
human rights within the country.”
“This blatant attempt to punish peaceful dissent and intimidate
others unfortunately demonstrates what constitutes the truth when it
comes to exercising political rights in Egypt today,” said Stork.
Ibrahim, an opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, has been jailed
since he turned himself into the authorities on April 19 following a
police raid on his home. The other four co-defendants went into
hiding when the indictments were announced on August 7. They are
Nasr Farouq al- Bahiri, a researcher for the Cairo-based Land Center
for Human Rights; Yahya Fikri Amin Zahra, an engineer; Mustafa
Muhammad al-Basiuni, unemployed, and Remon Edward Gindi Morgan, a
student.
The case has been referred to a Higher Emergency State Security
Court. These tribunals, created under the emergency law, allow no
appeal to a higher judicial body; their verdicts can only be
overturned or modified by the president of the republic. Article 80
(d) of Egypt’s Penal Code carries a prison sentence of up to five
years on any Egyptian who “deliberately discloses abroad false or
tendentious news, information, or rumors about the country’s
internal situation,” or who “carries out any activity aimed at
damaging the national interest of the country.” The defendants were
also charged under Article 86 bis of the Penal Code, passed in a
package of anti-terrorist legislation in 1992; it punishes anyone
who founds or joins an organization or association “impairing the
national unity or social peace.”
