Issue No. 592
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27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Indefinite detention
A human rights group has just issued a list of 100 suspected militants who have been "administratively detained" for years without charges or trial. Khaled Dawoud reports
Last week, the Human Rights Centre for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRCAP) issued its latest list of suspected militants who have been held in prison for years without charges or trial.
The list, which includes 100 names, is the group's fifth, bringing to 505 the number of such cases documented by the HRCAP in the three months since it started a campaign to highlight the plight of "administrative detainees".
It is the Emergency Law, which has been in effect in Egypt since the assassination of late President Anwar El- Sadat in 1981, which allows indefinite detentions such as the ones highlighted by the HRCAP's lists. Critics of the Emergency Law have consistently expressed their anxiety regarding the exceptional powers it gives the interior ministry when it comes to detaining suspects, both political and criminal.
When seeking to renew the Emergency Law over the past few years, the government has repeatedly pledged that it would only use it when dealing with terrorists and drug dealers. But human rights activists have accused the government of misusing the law, detaining people who have nothing to do with either terrorism or drugs.
A recent example is the current "administrative detention" of 21 people suspected of exchanging hard currency on the black market. According to HRCAP Director Mohamed Zarie, "The police is almost certain that they [the 21 people] are dealing in the black market, but they do not have concrete evidence to refer them to trial. So the only option that becomes available is to detain them."
Zarie said that "administrative detention is one of the most serious exceptional measures taken in violation of human rights. It permits the administration to restrict the freedom of any individual, for unspecified periods, and without charges or trial, based solely on the assumption of a person posing a political or criminal threat."
According to the Emergency Law, the interior minister is entitled to issue a detention order against any suspect for 30 days, said Zarie, who is also a lawyer. After this period is over, the suspect goes to court to contest the detention order. If the judge orders his release, the Interior Ministry is entitled to appeal the ruling, and the suspect must wait another two weeks before contesting the detention order again, this time in front of a different panel of judges. If the second panel orders the release of the suspect, the Interior Ministry has no choice but to accept the court ruling. At the same time, however, the Interior Ministry can also simply issue a new detention order, thus forcing the suspect to go through the whole process again.
"The interior minister should not be entitled to protest the court order in the first place," said Zarie. "That is unconstitutional since he is not part of the judiciary... even worse, however, are the number of orders issued by courts to release detainees. In some cases, we have more than 30 court orders to release detainees, but the Interior Ministry ignores them and automatically issues new detention orders."
Zarie provided Al-Ahram Weekly with copies of detention orders issued against several suspects. In each of the cases, the official papers show that new detention orders were issued the day after the court ordered the suspect's release.
Zarie said the 505 cases documented by his group so far, "are only a small percentage of the number of administrative detainees being held in 10 prisons". He said his group estimates "the total number to range between 15,000 and 16,000". This figure, Zarie added, also includes suspected militants who were convicted and served their jail terms, but remained in prison on administrative detention orders.
The actual number of detainees in Egypt, especially those suspected of being members of armed militant groups such as Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya and Jihad, has always been a mystery for observers and human rights groups.
The first wave of arrests took place in 1990, when the confrontation between the government and militants began in earnest after Parliament Speaker Rifaat Mahgoub was assassinated by Al- Gama'a in retaliation for the killing of a Gama'a spokesman. But the bulk of suspected Islamists currently being held in prison, were arrested between 1992 and 1997, during the peak years of the confrontation.
"Until 1997," said Zarie, "we estimated that the number of detainees ranged between 20,000 and 25,000. But after Interior Minister Habib El-Adli took office [in 1997, following the removal of Hassan El-Alfi after the Luxor massacre in which 58 tourists and four Egyptian were killed], he started the process of releasing detainees, and that is why the number went down to 15,000, as our estimate shows. There are no official records, but we believe nearly 7,000 people have been released over the past three years."
It is unlikely that the Interior Ministry, which has never revealed any official figures on the number of detainees being held, would do so now. Shortly before his dismissal, former Interior Minister Hassan El-Alfi -- when confronted by Islamists' claims that there were more than 30,000 detainees -- put the figure at 10,000.
The ministry has always denied misusing the powers granted to it by the Emergency Law, insisting that its policy of detaining suspects is amongst the main reasons for its successful prevention of scores of terrorist attacks.
Although Al-Gama'a's April 1999 declaration of a cease-fire on all anti- government attacks has helped jump- start the process of releasing detainees, Zarie noted that there has been a subsequent slow down since the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. "Now we are seeing new detentions, and renewed restrictions on prison visits," claimed Zarie, who attributed this to growing US pressure on Arab countries to confront so-called "terrorism".
Islamist lawyers and sources close to Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya did, however, acknowledge a shift in the ministry's policy on detention, saying that the arbitrary arrests and widespread clamp downs against suspected militants that were so prevalent before, have -- since 1997 -- nearly stopped. At the same time, Al-Gama'a leaders remain unsatisfied, with the call to release detainees consistently topping their demands in statements and interviews.
"We admit there has been a change in the ministry's policy," said Montasser Zayat, a prominent Islamist lawyer who played a key role in convincing the hard-line Gama'a leadership abroad to accept the 1999 call for a cease-fire. "Still, thousands remain in prison without charges or trial, and they have to be released as well."
The HRCAP's Zarie singles out the fact that "since 1997, there has not been a single terrorist attack by Al-Gama'a or Jihad against government officials, police, tourists or Coptic Christians."
"So why keep all these people detained?" Zarie asks.
The most "famous detainee" currently in prison, according to Zarie, is 33-year- old Hassan El-Gharabawi Shehata. He was arrested in 1989 in the former Gama'a stronghold of Ain Shams, an impoverished Cairo suburb, while still a third year student at the Faculty of Law, and has been issued repeated detention orders since then. "While in prison," recounted Zarie, Shehata "finished his law degree, registered for graduate studies and has even applied for membership at the Bar Association."
The HRCAP sent copies of its latest list of 100 detainees to the president, the interior minister, the justice minister and the public prosecutor. The group also urged the public to send appeals to release "administrative detainees" to these same top officials.
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