I. SUMMARY

Saadeddin Ibrahim, aged 63, is one of Egypt's leading voices for political reform and democratic rights. A sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, he founded in 1988 and then directed the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies until it was closed down by the Egyptian government in June 2000. The Center's program, ranging from minority rights to civic empowerment, included voter registration campaigns and election monitoring.

On May 21, 2001, Egypt's Supreme State Security Court sentenced Saadeddin Ibrahim to seven years in prison and six co-defendants to prison terms ranging from two to five years with labor. The court imposed suspended one-year sentences on twenty-one others; they were released.¹ The authorities shut down both the Ibn Khaldun Center and an affiliated organization promoting women's voting rights, the Hoda Association. 

The trial of Saadeddin Ibrahim and his co-accused was manifestly unfair. Human Rights Watch believes that it was politically motivated and that the Egyptian government targeted Saadeddin Ibrahim and others associated with the Ibn Khaldun Center because of their peaceful exercise of freedom of expression and criticism of the government.

On December 19, 2001, the Court of Cassation heard the appeal, limited to points of law, presented by the lawyers for the defendants convicted in the trial. The Court of Cassation's prosecution office, a body independent of the office of the General Prosecution and that advises the court's judges on the merits of legal points raised on appeal, submitted its assessment of the Ibn Khaldun appeal. This assessment agreed on a number of points raised by the defense, and concluded with a recommendation that the seven-member bench uphold the appeal and order a retrial. 

The campaign to silence Ibrahim began when armed State Security Intelligence (SSI) officers raided his home on the night of June 30, 2000 and took him into custody. At the time the Ibn Khaldun Center was working on a voter education project and a project to monitor upcoming parliamentary elections. That same evening two of Ibrahim's associates, Nadia Abd al-Nour and Usama Hammad Ali, were seized in the street by plainclothes security officers; the officers showed no arrest warrants and refused to tell the two why they were being detained or where they were being taken. Others were detained over the following days. 

Ibrahim and his associates were held in detention without charge and interrogated for up to six weeks. Ibrahim and Abd al-Nour were released on bail on August 10, and their colleagues were released over the following week. None of those who had been detained were charged, but an unspecified case against them remained "pending."

The Egyptian authorities took no further action for several weeks. However, on September 24, immediately after Ibrahim announced that he intended to proceed with the Center's plans to monitor and report on Egypt's forthcoming national elections, state authorities formally charged him with: (1) conspiring to bribe public television officials to secure media coverage of his activities; (2) accepting foreign funds for two voter education projects without official authorization; (3) disseminating false and harmful information about Egypt; and (4) defrauding European Union (E.U.) funds.

The authorities also indicated that they were considering bringing charges of treason-committing espionage on behalf of the United States-against Ibrahim. At the opening session of the trial, however, the prosecution said the espionage charge would be referred to another "competent court," but no further action was taken. When asked about the case in a Newsweek interview, President Hosni Mubarak responded: "You are making a big fuss about this man. Some people consider him a traitor. So the best thing is not to mention him." President Mubarak, after asserting that "we never interfere" in matters before the court, went on to suggest that it was his personal intervention that had saved Ibrahim from formal charges of treason. "There was a very serious accusation against him," he said. "I told the attorney general, put it aside, because this would make it a big story and very high punishment."²

The indictment against Ibrahim and his colleagues was brought under the terms of the state of emergency that has been in force throughout Egypt almost without interruption since 1967. Under emergency rule, security officials are empowered to arrest at will persons they suspect of being "a threat to national security and public order," and to refer defendants, including civilians, to military courts and exceptional state security courts. The Supreme State Security Court amounts to a parallel court system, one that it susceptible to government influence. Defendants can appeal verdicts only in relation to the application of points of law, not on matters of substance or the facts of the case. 

The use of emergency legislation and special security courts have been key elements in the government's efforts over recent years to stifle political opposition and dissent, including peaceful dissent. The decision to prosecute Ibrahim and his co-accused after he stated that his Center would monitor the elections,³ was highly selective. The charge of receiving unauthorized donations, brought under Military Order No. 4 of 1992, had been used only once before, also against a human rights activist: in 1998, the authorities arrested Hafez Abu Sa'ada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), following publication of an EOHR report on torture and other abuses related to the government's handling of Muslim-Coptic disturbances in the Upper Egypt town of al-Kusheh; the Abu Sa'ada case never went to trial. The military decree, issued in response to a perceived emergency situation early in the decade, was never incorporated into existing legislation. This was underscored in a July 2001 ruling of the Court of Cassation in another case; in this, the court held that the Military Governor had exceeded his authority in issuing the decree and usurped the powers of the judiciary and legislature. 

The charge of "disseminating abroad false and tendentious information" was based on Article 80(d) of the Penal Code, which is so vaguely drawn as to invite abuse by the authorities.⁴ The information in question was two criticisms that Ibrahim had repeatedly made regarding Egyptian government policies. One was that previous Egyptian elections had been characterized by widespread and serious irregularities, including fraud and intimidation of candidates and voters. That this is so had been widely reported in Egypt and abroad, and underscored by a Supreme Constitutional Court decision in July 2000 that effectively declared the 1990 and 1995 national legislative elections null and void. Ibrahim's second criticism was his contention that discrimination against the country's Christian (Coptic) minority was on the increase. The Supreme State Security Court ruling against Ibrahim stated that he knew he was disseminating information that by its very nature would damage the country's prestige. The court characterized this information as "lies" despite extensive evidence regarding its factual basis. 

The court also convicted Ibrahim and other defendants of committing fraud in expense claims submitted to the E.U. related to grants the latter had made to the Ibn Khaldun Center and the Hoda Association (the women's voting rights project). The government pursued these charges despite a December 13, 2000, public statement of the European Commission which said that it had conducted external audits of both projects and that those audits "gave no cause for concern, financial or otherwise."

The trial opened on November 18, 2000, and concluded, after fifteen sessions, with the announcement of the verdicts on May 21, 2001. Ibrahim was convicted of receiving donations without prior official permission, disseminating false information designed to undermine Egypt's stature abroad, and defrauding the European Union. Four of his associates were convicted of assisting in the perpetration of fraud. All five were acquitted of the conspiracy to commit bribery charge. Two others, a one-time employee and a policeman, were convicted of offering and accepting bribes and forging official documents.

Human Rights Watch monitored the trial closely. Egyptian officials have repeatedly insisted that the trial was fair and impartial, in accord with the Egyptian constitution and with international fair trial standards. The record, however, indicates that the court compromised many basic due process rights as a result of rulings and decisions that undermined the ability of the defendants and their lawyers to mount an effective defense, including:

· Denial of defense access to key documents, including materials seized from the Ibn Khaldun Center and Ibrahim's home, until four months into the trial.

· Denial of defense access to the prosecution memorandum detailing its case against the defendants until four months into the trial.

· Access to thousands of pages of documents, when finally granted to defense lawyers, was limited to a single session of several hours, and permission to photocopy any documents was denied.

· Incomplete minutes of the trial proceedings, and denial of defense lawyers' access to official summaries of proceedings. 

· Consistent failure of the presiding judge to respond to defense challenges of constitutionality of relevant statutes.

· Failure of the justices to consider all documentation submitted on behalf of the defendants prior to reaching their verdicts. 

Taking into account, (1) the merits of the charges, (2) the treatment of the defendants at the time of arrest and during their detention, (3) the decision to bring those charges before an exceptional court outside of the regular judicial system and without a right of appeal on the facts of the case, and (4) systematic due process violations during the trial, it is difficult to avoid concluding that the Egyptian government was determined to secure the conviction and imprisonment of Saadeddin Ibrahim and his colleagues, both to punish their criticism of the government and to deter other actual or potential critics.

At the December 19, 2001, appeal hearing before the Court of Cassation, Saadeddin Ibrahim's defense lawyer reiterated his application, on medical grounds, for a temporary suspension of sentence pending the outcome of the appeal. Ibrahim has been diagnosed as suffering from a degenerative neurological condition requiring immediate specialist diagnosis and treatment. His health has deteriorated during his incarceration, and recent tests have shown damage to the spinal cord and motor regions of the brain. After a two-hour adjournment, the presiding judge announced that the next session of the appeal would take place on January 16, 2002. The court took no decision on the substance of the appeal or on the application for temporary suspension of sentence. 

² Newsweek, April 9, 2001.

³ There was some independent monitoring of these elections by local human rights groups, but its scope was limited in comparison with past monitoring operations. According to their findings, and as indicated by press reports at the time, the elections were marked by violence and irregularities, though on a diminished scale from that of 1995. 

⁴ It was also used in the case of Hafez Abu Sa'ada.