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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Lawyers walkout
By Gamal Essam El-Din
in Wali vs Al-ShaabThe seven-month confrontation between Youssef Wali, deputy prime minister and minister of agriculture, and the Islamist-oriented Al-Shaab newspaper is approaching a climax. The Cairo Criminal Court will pronounce, on 14 August, its ruling in the libel suit brought by Wali against three journalists and a cartoonist working for Al-Shaab, mouthpiece of the Islamist-oriented Labour Party. One of the defendants, Al-Shaab's Chief Editor Magdi Hussein, was elected last week to the Press Syndicate's council.
Before the court announced its decision, Al-Shaab's lawyers decided to walk out in protest against the court's refusal to summon Wali as a witness. The lawyers also became entangled in a verbal clash with No'man Goma'a, Wali's lawyer, and prosecutor Abul-Nasr Othman.
Ali El-Ghatiet, Al-Shaab's principal attorney, took the court by surprise by arguing that its resumption of hearings of the libel suit was unconstitutional. According to El-Ghatiet, the prosecutor-general's decision to put Al-Shaab journalists on trial without seeking the prior permission of the Higher Press Council went against the constitution. "Article 206 of the constitution states that the press is the fourth estate. Moreover, Article 211 states that any official dealings with the press should be channelled through the Higher Press Council, which alone is empowered to regulate the relationship between the press and other authorities. In the same context, the same article states that the prosecutor-general should seek the prior permission of the Higher Press Council before putting journalists on trial," El-Ghatiet said.
Joining forces with El-Ghatiet, Al-Shaab's lawyers Adel Eid and Mahmoud El-Sakka complained that the court had rejected all of their requests -- especially summoning Wali as a key witness -- although they were submitted at the beginning of the trial on 15 May. The two lawyers said they had suspicions that the court's rejection was influenced by "personal" considerations. "All kinds of people, whatever their positions may be, should be dealt with on an equal footing before the court. All judicial precedents indicate that various high-ranking officials were compelled to comply with the court's order to come forward and testify in previous libel suits. Cases in point are the former ministers of interior and Al-Awqaf [religious endowments], who testified in previous libel suits," said Eid. Al-Shaab's lawyers also complained that although the court agreed to summon 14 high-ranking Agriculture Ministry officials as witnesses, it failed to compel any of them to come forward and testify.
The lawyers submitted to the court 44 dossiers of documents containing alleged information about Wali's strong relations with Israel.
Eid and El-Ghatiet concluded that they could no longer go ahead with their task of defending Al-Shaab's journalists as long as the court was determined to reject their requests. "Because the court is adamant on expropriating the defendants' rights and violating the constitution, we have decided to walk out in protest," Eid said.
Youssef Wali
For his part, Othman said the documents submitted by lawyers of the defendants contained misinformation for the purpose of slander and defamation.
No'man Goma'a, Wali's lawyer and deputy chairman of the liberal Wafd Party, stuck to his argument that the Criminal Procedures Law prohibits public officials, such as Wali, from testifying before courts for fear of divulging secret information about their work. Goma'a also submitted to the court a long memorandum in which he asserted that Al-Shaab's charges against Wali are entirely unfounded. In his memorandum, Goma'a said that Wali, despite his high-ranking position, is a modest and devout person. "He lives in a very modest apartment and neither takes summer holidays nor a government salary," Goma'a said.
Goma'a defended Wali against the accusation of normalising relations with Israel by arguing that most Israeli visitors meet, not only with Wali, but with other cabinet ministers as well and, in many cases, with President Hosni Mubarak himself. "The opposition has the right to object to normalising relations with Israel, but it does not have the right to impose this objection on others," he said.
According to Goma'a, "normalisation is the responsibility of the government whose ministers are not governed by personal whims but by general policies."
Agriculture was chosen by the late President Anwar El-Sadat as the ideal field for normalising relations with Israel, Goma'a said. "President Mubarak, in the presence of Wali, met with the Israeli agriculture minister to review the role played by Israeli agricultural experts in Egypt. This means that normalising relations with Israel is not the responsibility of Wali, because Wali is neither an independent republic nor does he work in isolation from the government," he added. He also said that all "contacts" between Wali and the Israelis are under the supervision of state security authorities. Besides, Goma'a added, Al-Shaab's claim that Wali commissioned Israeli companies and Mossad to establish a computer network for the Agriculture Ministry is entirely unfounded. "This claim is a lie because the computer network in the Agriculture Ministry was installed in 1992 by Egyptian companies under the supervision of the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre," Goma'a said.
Goma'a concluded that Al-Shaab's campaign against Wali was a type of intellectual terrorism that culminated in an accusation of high treason. "This is an obvious sign of irresponsibility because it is not an easy thing to charge high-ranking officials with high treason. It is a charge that can only be levelled by security authorities and must be approved by the judiciary," he said.
Magdi Hussein, Al-Shaab's editor-in-chief, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the lawyers' decision to walk out should have been expected and was "even a foregone conclusion." "It was clear from the beginning that the court was intent on bringing this trial to an end as soon as possible. We, however, are not afraid that the court will rule against us because we have been fighting a national battle. We are sure that public opinion is on our side."
