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V. Arbitrary Arrest and Detention

Many of the arrests and detentions by security forces on March 21 and afterwards in connection with antiwar protests appear to have been without cause or were conducted in an unlawful manner. The majority of the hundreds of people detained on March 21 were reportedly released within twenty-four hours.  Most of the sixty-one persons arrested that day and ordered held for further investigation appear to have been detained because of their known or alleged affiliations with organizations critical of government policies rather than because police had evidence of their participation in the destruction of property or other crimes.

Manal Khalid, for instance, told Human Rights Watch that she was going to get some lunch at al-Tahrir Square at about noon on March 21, prior to the arrival of most demonstrators, when plainclothes security officers apparently recognized her from the demonstration the previous day, called out her name, and grabbed her. When she resisted being dragged to a police vehicle, they beat her.⁴⁴

Sayyid, a student activist who did not want his real name used, told Human Rights Watch that he arrived at al-Tahrir Square around 2:30 p.m. on March 21. Security forces were “everywhere” and “arresting everyone they could grab hold of,” he said. “Because there were a lot of people, they concentrated on the youth.” Sayyid said he was stopped by uniformed police who demanded his ID.⁴⁵“Then a plainclothes officer came over and said, ‘You don’t have to ask for his ID, it’s obvious he is a demonstrator.’ When I asked how he knew anything about me, three of them surrounded me and punched me and hit me with their batons.”  Before he was released the next morning, Sayyid said, security officers told him that his name was on a list of activist students at Cairo University and for that reason he should report to SSI’s Giza headquarters.⁴⁶

Hossam al-Hamalawy, a journalist with the weekly Cairo Times and a stringer for the Los Angeles Times, was arrested by four plainclothes security officers while leaving a restaurant around noontime in al-Tahrir Square on March 22, the day following the protest confrontations. Al-Hamalawy had attended the antiwar protests in al-Tahrir on March 20, two days earlier, and reportedly had been beaten by security officials. On March 22 he was taken to al-Gamaliyya police station, along with other youths arrested that day.⁴⁷ The officers who seized him on March 22 told two of his friends at the scene, “He is known to us to be a dangerous man.”⁴⁸ He was released later that day, reportedly following the intervention of Los Angeles Times officials.

Approximately fifteen persons were arrested at or in the vicinity of the Bar Association building on the evening of March 21 (see above testimonies of Gamal ‘Eid, Muhammad Zaki, et al). At the time of their arrest they were not violating or accused of violating any law or ordnance or committing any crime, and no warrant or judicial order was produced demanding their surrender for any alleged earlier violations. In some cases, they had intervened to protect demonstrators and bystanders from violent attacks by security forces.

Two of those arrested in the days following the March 21 protests, Hamdeen Sabahi, 49, and Farid Hassanein, 63, are members of parliament. Sabahi, who had been beaten in the March 21 protest as described above, was arrested on Sunday evening, March 23, as he was leaving his home. Hassanein was arrested the same night at Misr International Hospital, where he was recovering from injuries sustained from beatings by security officers near the Bar Association building two days earlier, and shortly before he was to travel to Vienna for treatment for a heart condition. As members of parliament both enjoy immunity from arrest except in circumstances where they are apprehended committing a crime.⁴⁹ In this case, some forty-eight hours had passed from the time of the demonstrations and the alleged offences. In a March 23 communication to the speaker of the parliament, responding to parliamentary criticism of the arrests, Minister of Justice Faruq Sayf al-Nasr alleged that Sabahi and Hassanein had incited demonstrators to “attack police, chant anti-government slogans, and commit acts of sabotage” and that “the offences were even photographed and recorded on video.”⁵⁰

According to Hala Darrugh, SSI agents came to her house in the early hours of April 14, 2003, and arrested her husband, journalist and writer Ibrahim al-Sahari, without any warrant or judicial order.⁵¹ Al-Sahari was detained without charge for eleven days before being released. He was held at the Gabir ibn Hayyan police station the first night and then at SSI headquarters in Lazoghli. He told Egyptian human rights defender `Aida Seif al-Dawla that for a period of several hours he was beaten and kicked by three officers upset by his “slogans against the president.”⁵²

In addition, many detainees were held at sites not recognized in the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Prisons Law as legal places of detention. Large numbers of persons arrested on March 21 were detained that night and the next day at the Central Security training camp at al-Darassa and others at a Central Security camp at Madinat Nasr. Those arrested by SSI officers in the days after March 21 were initially detained at SSI headquarters in Lazoghli or at other SSI offices. The four students who were arrested on Saturday, April 14—`Amr Muhammad `Abd al-Latif, Walid `Abd al-Razzaq Fu’ad, Mahmud Hassan, and Ramiz Gihad—were detained for at least three days at SSI headquarters in Lazoghli before being released or transferred to regular jails.

Arbitrary Arrest and Freedom of Assembly Under International and Egyptian Law

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Egypt is a state party, guarantees the right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention.⁵³   An arrest is arbitrary under the ICCPR when it is not in accordance with the law or when the law itself is arbitrary; thus arrests of persons for the exercise of their fundamental rights is considered arbitrary and in violation of international law.  

Article 21 of the ICCPR guarantees the right to peaceful assembly.⁵⁴  As one noted commentator has said, “[T]he focus of freedom of assembly is clearly on its democratic function in the process of forming, expressing and implementing political opinions….The democratic function of freedom of assembly means that States are under a stronger duty to ensure the right with positive measures than with civil rights, which are exclusively exercised for private interests."⁵⁵  States should “make available public thoroughfares or other areas, possibly re-route traffic, and … not discriminate or act arbitrarily in denying access to public buildings for the holding of assemblies.”⁵⁶  The state must also act to prevent the provocation or use of force by the security forces or private actors that would encourage violence.⁵⁷ 

The only restrictions that may be placed on freedom of assembly are “those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”⁵⁸  Any restrictions must be limited to what is necessary and proportionate—the manner and intensity of state interference must be necessary to attain a legitimate purpose, and the prohibition or forceful breaking up of an assembly may only be considered when milder means have failed.⁵⁹   

According to article 54 of Egypt’s Constitution, “Citizens shall have the right to peaceable and unarmed private assembly without the need for prior notice…. Public meetings, processions and gatherings are allowed within the limits of the law.”⁶⁰

Those demonstrators arrested on or immediately after March 21 were, as noted above, charged with violating the Illegal Assembly Law of 1914. This statute requires any gathering, defined as five or more persons, to disperse if so ordered by the authorities on the ground that the gathering poses a threat to public order.⁶¹ It does not require prior permission for public assemblies. Citizens can lodge an appeal against a ban with the Minister of Interior, or may challenge it in a petition to an administrative court.⁶² None of those charged in connection with the demonstrations on March 20 and 21 were charged under a different law, the Public Assembly Act No. 14 of 1923, which requires that persons wishing to hold a public demonstration must notify the authorities at least three days in advance and sets penalties for those who plan, organize, or participate in an unannounced or unapproved demonstration.  Human Rights Watch considers both the 1914 and 1923 laws to be contrary to current international legal norms.