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Egypt’s decision to continue the imprisonment without trial of engineer and antiwar activist Ashraf Ibrahim shows the government’s intent to punish and discourage peaceful dissent, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said Ibrahim has been held for three months while a dubious investigation into his use of the Internet proceeds.

Ibrahim turned himself over to State Security Investigations (SSI) on April 19, 2003, two days after SSI agents raided his home and confiscated his computer, video camera, scanner, and other electronic equipment, along with many of his books and papers. His jailing was renewed for another fifteen-day period by prosecutors on July 14. “Ashraf Ibrahim is being persecuted because he exercised basic freedoms to speak his mind and assemble with others in protest,” said Joe Stork, Washington director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “The Egyptian authorities should release him immediately.”

Prosecutors have not referred the case to a court. They told Ibrahim and his attorneys that he is being investigated for downloading information on human rights from the Internet and downloading material from the website of al-Jazeera news service, and other alleged offenses. Prosecutors have not indicated under what provisions of Egypt’s criminal code these activities might constitute an offense.

“Accessing news and human rights information from the Internet is a basic right, not a crime,” Stork said.

Ibrahim, an engineer by profession, is an activist with the Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising. He participated in several Cairo demonstrations against the war in Iraq this spring. He also serves as secretary of the Association on Health and Environmental Development, an Egyptian non-governmental organization. His arrest came after a month-long crackdown in which hundreds of antiwar and pro-Palestinian demonstrators were detained. Sixty-nine people still face criminal charges, but all except Ibrahim have been freed on bail.

Ibrahim has been held at Mahkum Tora prison, near Cairo. He reportedly shares a cell with approximately forty criminal convicts—in violation of international standards that require pre-trial detainees to be separated from convicted prisoners. Ibrahim has appeared seven times before prosecutors at the State Security Prosecution Office in Heliopolis, Cairo, most recently on July 14. Each time the prosecution has renewed his detention for an additional fifteen days. At a prosecution interrogation on June 29, Ibrahim accused prosecutors of bias, and demanded to appear before an investigating judge to review his detention. Attorneys who have formed a defense committee to assist him also protested against prosecution conduct. Ibrahim told one of his attorneys that a State Security officer offered to release him in exchange for naming twenty other activists.

Prosecutors have denied defense lawyers access to eleven pages of interrogation transcripts. They have not called witnesses in the case, or lodged formal charges against Ibrahim. State Security officers raided his home at 3 a.m. on April 17, while Ibrahim was in another city. Attorneys in the case say that the warrant from State Security prosecutors authorizing the search is dated eleven hours later.

Human rights activists spoke to Ibrahim in hiding on the day following the State Security raid. “I have nothing to conceal,” Ibrahim said, expressing outrage at security forces’ assault on his privacy, which he believes is in retaliation for his political activism.

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