7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Going home
After twice cancelling hearings, the Court of Cassation announced yesterday that Saadeddin Ibrahim would be granted a re-trial. Jailan Halawi attended the courtroom
Family, friends, representatives of the international media and supporters of Saadeddin Ibrahim had an anxious four- hour wait yesterday before the judge finally emerged from the inner sanctum of the courtroom to announce a re-trial. The silence was broken by shouts of jubilation.
Saadeddin Ibrahim
" We are overjoyed we don't believe it," said Ibrahim's wife, Barbara, following the ruling. "This is a wonderful moment we've been waiting so long for."
A sociologist with an international reputation, Ibrahim's was one of the highest profile trials of recent years. Representatives from international human rights groups as well as diplomats from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Australia, Holland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the US attended the hearing.
" I welcome today's decision by the court to overturn the conviction of Dr Saaeddin Ibrahim and the others convicted with him," David Welch, the US ambassador to Egypt, said in a statement. "We have repeatedly expressed our concern about the fairness of the process with the Egyptian government, and hope that the case against Dr Ibrahim will now be dropped."
"This is good result... the best that we could expect since it was either a re-trial or an overturning of the appeal and hence an extension of the detention period," said Gareth Bayley, press attaché at the British embassy.
The 63 year-old professor of sociology at AUC and director of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Developmental Studies, holds US as well as Egyptian citizenship. He was arrested on 30 June, 2000, and sentenced last May, by a state security court, along with 27 associates, to prison terms ranging between one and seven years.
Ibrahim was convicted of violating military decree No.4, issued in 1992, prohibiting the receipt of funds from abroad. He was further accused of embezzling such funding.
In response to the charges, the E U issued statements confirming they were satisfied with the way Ibrahim had made use of their money and repeatedly praised his activity in the field of human rights. The state security court nonetheless issued what local and international human rights groups described as a harsh sentence.
The arrest of Ibrahim and his subsequent trial surprised many. He has been involved in development for decades, though in recent years his sponsorship of a series of conferences on ethnic and religious minorities in the Arab world, which appeared to classify Egypt's Copts alongside Kurds and the southern Sudanese, had provoked the wrath of both the state and many Egyptian intellectuals. Ibrahim was accused of pandering to extremist expatriate Coptic organisations in the US, which, some claimed, are being supported by American Zionist groups to foment religious strife in Egypt.
Given the background, many international human rights organisations have argued that the case was politically motivated. "We still have concerns that the case is politically motivated and is being used to threaten human rights activists and deter them from criticising the government's policies," Sarah Hamood, representative of London-based Amnesty International told the Weekly.
"The trial of Dr Ibrahim and his colleagues is a blatant attempt by the Egyptian authorities to stifle freedom of expression and to intimidate the whole Egyptian human rights movement into silence." Although pleased with the ruling, Hamood said Amnesty would continue to monitor the case closely.
The date for a new trial was has not been set, though lawyers expect Ibrahim, said to be suffering from a degenerative neurological condition, to be freed pending re-trial.
"My husband is not in good health and our main concern is to bring him home, restore him to his best shape and spend time together as a family," Barbara Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim Saleh, leader of the defence team, denied claims that the ruling was due to international pressure. "Egypt's judicial system does not respond to pressures of any kind and is completely independent," he said, claiming yesterday's verdict as "the best example of that."
The prosecution office at the Court of Cassation, which advises judges on whether to accept or reject appeals, backed the reasons given by Ibrahim's lawyers to overturn the ruling. The memo backing Ibrahim's request presented by the Court of Cassation's prosecution office contends that the court ignored claims made by one of the convicts, Khaled Fayad, that "confessions" he made condemning Ibrahim were a result of "coercion and pressure," and added that the state security court had failed to consider documents and testimonies presented by Ibrahim's lawyers that might have altered its ruling.
Whatever the reasons behind Ibrahim's re-trial are, it remains unclear whether Wednesday's ruling was a victory for human rights and civil society, the conclusion of a lesson in the limits of freedom of expression and NGO activities, or merely a truce.
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