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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Waiting on the facts
By Jailan Halawi
Reports earlier this week that Saadeddin Ibrahim, a sociology professor and director of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Developmental Studies, has been charged with spying for a foreign country were refuted on Tuesday by Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed. Speaking at a press conference, Abdel-Wahed said that no bill of indictment has as yet been issued against Ibrahim. Investigations into the case will continue "until the facts are established," Abdel-Wahed pointed out, asserting that no formal charges have been made.
Abdel-Wahed added that it is impossible to press "specific charges before acquiring adequate evidence" and that the accused has the right to view all information, reports and documents pertaining to his case "to enable him to defend himself." He added that as soon as the investigations are completed, the results will be announced.
Abdel-Wahed's statement followed an announcement by Ibrahim's lawyer, Farid El-Dib, that prosecutors confronted Ibrahim with the accusation that he spied for the United States.
Ibrahim has denied any wrongdoing in the case which has included accusations that he accepted money from the European Union (EU) without obtaining government permission, that he forged voting cards and that a documentary he produced about elections tarnishes Egypt's image.
El-Dib said that his client was accused on Sunday of "communicating with the US with the intention of harming Egypt's national security and its military, economic and political interests" -- an accusation that carries the connotation that Ibrahim is guilty of espionage.
El-Dib denounced the accusations as "a farce and nonsense," saying the basis for the government's claims that his client spied for the US was a conference that Ibrahim attended in 1994, where he presented a paper about Islamist extremism in Egypt. The conference was organised by the US Department of Defence in cooperation with an Egyptian think tank.
"The authorities disregarded all the high-ranking Egyptian officials and academics who attended the conference and accused Ibrahim," El-Dib said, adding that Egypt's ambassador to the US at that time had also attended.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US Embassy in Cairo met senior Egyptian officials as soon as it learned of the accusations of espionage. "They informed us that the government of Egypt has not filed charges against Dr Ibrahim," said Boucher.
Legal experts speculated that some confusion may have arisen among American observers because of the procedural differences between Anglo-Saxon law and the system of law in Egypt that is based on the Napoleonic Code. Formal indictment comes late in the legal process in Egypt -- sometimes after lengthy inquiries by prosecutors who play the role of investigating magistrates.
Boucher said: "We're pleased to find that those reports are inaccurate, but we do remain deeply concerned about his [Ibrahim's] continued detention without charges. We don't understand the decision to prolong his detention and we call upon the Egyptian government to make clear the formal charges against him, or better yet, to release him."
Espionage carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Prosecutors also accused Ibrahim of researching Egyptian factories for a US organisation that aims at harming Egypt's economy.
This claim is related to the provision of data on some clothing factories by Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Centre to Verite, a Massachusetts-based non-profit organisation that helps corporations assure consumers that goods bearing their trademarks are produced under work conditions that meet international work standards.
During interrogations that continued almost on a daily basis this week, Ibrahim was also accused of bribing state television officials to collect research data, the lawyer said.
International human rights groups last Friday urged the EU to condemn what they termed as recent attacks by Egyptian authorities on civil society, warning that continued silence risks undermining the EU's credibility in the region.
A statement by seven human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, also condemned Ibrahim's arrest. The statement, released in Paris, also criticised the EU for its silence on the matter, implying its acceptance of what it called a "serious attack" by the Egyptian government on the right of free association. "The EU's prolonged silence risks creating a dangerous precedent which will have serious negative effects on the entire region," the statement said. It continued saying, "The silence of the EU is even more regrettable since the charges of accepting foreign funding without permission of the authorities refer to, among others, the funds received by the Ibn Khaldun Centre from EU's MEDA Democracy Programme," it said. This EU programme is part of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.
By remaining silent, according to the statement "It [the EU] risks undermining the credibility of the EU as a partner for the promotion and protection of human rights and civil society in the Mediterranean region."
The rights groups appealed to France, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, as well as the EU council of ministers and the European Commission, to "speak out publicly" on the matter.
Ibrahim's family has appealed to President Hosni Mubarak to intervene in the case. His wife, Barbara, said she believed the investigators had accelerated their probe into her husband's case due to pressure from the Egyptian government.
"The state security prosecutors have been under pressure to stop dragging this process out and because of that pressure they've now sped up the investigation..." she said.
Ibrahim has said in a statement from jail that his arrest is a government attempt to keep the Ibn Khaldun Centre from monitoring the upcoming parliamentary elections.
In the past, Ibrahim accused the government of vote-rigging -- charges it rejected.
Ibrahim was arrested on 30 June along with his secretary, Nadia Abdel-Nour, a Sudanese national. On 27 July their detention was extended for a third consecutive two-week period. Eleven other Ibn Khaldun Centre employees detained in the case are also still in custody.
