Issue No. 591
Home news
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 Home news |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Political postponements?
For the 94 suspected members of "Al-Waad" -- including a defendant recently handed over to Egypt from Azerbaijan -- the wait for trial's end promises to be a little bit longer. Khaled Dawoud reports
The Supreme Military Court at Haikstep trying 94 defendants for membership in a previously unknown militant group called Al-Waad, or the Promise, was supposed to issue its sentences on 16 June. But the relatives of those on trial, as well as the lawyers and journalists who gathered Sunday in front of the military camp 35km north of Cairo where the trial was taking place, felt fairly certain that the verdicts would probably not be announced that day.
They were right. Out of the 94 defendants in the dock, seven were being tried in absentia. However, one of the seven fugitives, Abdel-Rahman Fakhri Abul-Ela, 22, was arrested in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan and handed over to Egypt in late April. Although he holds dual Egyptian- Canadian citizenship, Abul-Ela is being tried as an Egyptian.
According to the law, if a defendant being tried in absentia is arrested before sentencing is announced, the hearings have to be re-opened. On Sunday, Abul-Ela's lawyer, Mamdouh Ismail, asked the court to re-open deliberations so that he could defend his client.
The judge, whose name cannot be mentioned for security reasons, agreed and adjourned the case until 30 June.
According to Ismail, this means that the judge will not announce the sentences on that day, but simply listen to his case, and then set a new date for sentencing.
The Al-Waad case defendants, who include three foreign nationals from the former Soviet republic of Daghestan and three Egyptians who hold dual nationalities, were arrested in May of last year, and charged with seeking to smuggle weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas through the Egyptian border at Rafah. They were also charged with raising funds for Palestine and Chechnya and providing at least 10 of the defendants with military training.
After the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington, however, the charge sheet expanded dramatically. Much more serious charges of seeking to topple the government and assassinate top government officials were added, and the group was referred to a military trial. Hearings began in November, with several opposition groups, mainly Islamists and leftists, dismayed at the fact that the government had decided to put people on trial for seeking to provide support to Palestinians suffering from Israeli aggression.
After nearly four months of proceedings, the Supreme Military Court decided to deliver its sentences in early April. But, at that same time, Israel had reoccupied the entire West Bank and pro-Palestinian demonstrations were taking place across the country.
Thus, when the Military Court chose, on 6 April, to delay sentencing until 30 June, many observers linked the decision to ongoing events in the occupied Palestinian territories.
A similar scenario took place in the case of the 22 prominent members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who have also been facing a military trial since late last year. The court was due to release their sentences on 7 April, a date which was pushed back to 25 May and finally to 30 July.
For Islamist lawyers, the repeated postponement of rulings in military cases confirmed that they were "political and not judicial trials", lawyer Ismail said.
In the Al-Waad case, Ismail told the court on Sunday that his client, Abul- Ela, was handed over to Egypt by Azerbaijan in late February and not in April, as the military prosecution had said. Ismail alleged that Abul-Ela was held incommunicado during this period, and subjected to torture in order to extract confessions regarding his activities and those of other defendants. The court responded to Ismail's claims by ordering a medical examination of Abul-Ela in an attempt to verify whether the torture allegations were true.
Speaking to the Associated Press (AP) during Sunday's session, Abul-Ela denied that he had been on the run, saying he was heading to Canada to finish his studies and had stopped over in Azerbaijan "to see the Muslims over there with whom I am sympathetic".
"These charges against me have no grain of truth. I am a regular Muslim with no psychological or personal problems," Abul-Ela told AP. "I have no problems with the people they accuse me of wanting to assassinate," he said, referring to the charges against him of plotting to assassinate top officials, ministers, secular writers and artists.
The lead defendant in the Al-Waad case is Sheikh Fawzi Nashaat, a prominent Nasr City imam (preacher). He told Al-Ahram Weekly when the trial began that he has never had any ties with extremist groups seeking to topple the government. He did not deny raising funds for Muslims in former Soviet republics, but insisted that this had been for purely humanitarian reasons.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
