18 - 24 January 2001
Issue No.517
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 18 - 24 January 2001 Issue No.517 |
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Selling the CIA to Mossad?
Sherif El-Filali, 34, was brought from his prison cell to a crowded courtroom in Abbasiya on Saturday wearing a white training suit and sports shoes, handcuffed to a prison guard and carrying a bottle of water. He made a show of self-confidence, smiling broadly, brandishing his fist in the air and flashing the victory sign to his bewildered mother and father. "Be strong, Sherif. We are sure you are innocent," shouted his mother, Suheir Murad, as her son was locked in the court cage.
El-Filali
Accused of espionage, El-Filali was arrested on 27 September for what chief prosecutor Hisham Badawi has identified as "communicating with others working for a foreign country, with the intention of harming national interests." El-Filali is also accused of providing a second defendant, Gregory Sergevic, with reports on political, economic and tourism conditions and "agreeing [with Sergevic] to work for the interests of Israeli intelligence." Sergevic, a Russian, is standing trial in absentia. Though El-Filali denies all charges against him, Badawi claims that he received payment from foreign agents "to perform acts that harm the country's national interests."
The peace treaty that officially ended hostilities between Egypt and Israel was signed in 1979, but this is the second time in four years that Egypt has tried a national on charges of spying for Israel. In November 1996, Azzam Azzam, an Israeli of Druze origin, was arrested along with an Egyptian accomplice, Emad Ismail, and accused of gathering information for the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. Azzam was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and Ismail is serving a life term.
There are similarities between the two cases. Like Azzam and Ismail, El-Filali faced great difficulty in finding a lawyer to defend him after he was prematurely condemned by the press as a "man who sold his country to the enemy." The country's highest official religious authority, Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel, was quoted by a national newspaper as saying that any lawyer who agreed to defend El-Filali would be a "traitor." But the mufti later retracted the statement, saying that he was misquoted.
El-Filali's lawyer, Ahmed Abdel-Khaleq, reminded the court on Saturday that the press campaign and the mufti's reported statement had already served as punishment for his client -- a flagrant violation of the basic judicial principle that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Abdel-Khaleq, whose name was kept secret until the opening of the trial, then went on to paint a rather unflattering view of his client. He described him as a "crook" who had tried to sell Sergevic information that is readily available on the Internet. Abdel-Khaleq also indicated that El-Filali had cooperated with Sergevic with the aim of selling weapons to Iraq.
According to Abdel-Khaleq, the scheme was revealed when El-Filali practically wrote his own arrest warrant by calling at the Egyptian embassy in Madrid and asking to meet with officials to determine whether he should get involved in the alleged arms deal. But Abdel-Khaleq questioned the weight of the information confiscated by police from El-Filali's apartment. Police seized two computers, a desktop and a laptop, as well as 13 discs allegedly containing the information sought by the Russian defendant. "I hope the court will allow me to bring in a computer at the next session, and with the press of a button, I will show you all the information in my client's possession, which was mainly copied from the [US] Central Intelligence Agency's [CIA] site on the Internet," Abdel-Khaleq explained.
Fawzi El-Filali, the defendant's father, sat next to his wife throughout hearings, denying the charges against their son. "This case has been fabricated against my son, but I have confidence in the Egyptian judiciary," he said. "If I knew my son was an Israeli spy, I would have killed him myself."
Judge Mohamed El-Gohari adjourned hearings until 11 February and agreed to most of the demands made by the defence, except for requests to summon the Egyptian ambassador to Spain, the military attaché and the head of the intelligence service. El-Gohari also ordered an expert to be brought in during the next session to explain to the court the contents of the two computers and the 13 discs seized from El-Filali's apartment.
Prosecutor Badawi, seeking to refute El-Filali's defence, reminded the court that any contact with a representative of a foreign country aimed at providing national information is a crime -- even if the information provided does not compromise the country's national security.
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