The Egyptian government’s decision to charge five anti-war activists under emergency legislation shows its contempt for the most elemental right to peaceful dissent, Human Rights Watch said today.
Letter to Egypt's Prosecutor General (Arabic)
In letters sent today to President Mubarak and Prosecutor General Maher `Abd al-Wahed, Human Rights Watch urged them to release engineer Ashraf Ibrahim from detention and to halt politically motivated legal proceedings against him and four others. The charges against Ibrahim include “communicating with foreign human rights organizations.”
“These charges testify to the poor state of political freedoms in Egypt today,” said Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “The emergency laws under which these men were charged are so broad and vague that they allow the government to criminalize virtually any manner of political dissent at will.”
The five activists are charged with spreading false information about Egypt abroad and membership in a banned “revolutionary socialist group.” The indictment also accuses Ibrahim of “sending false information to foreign bodies—foreign human rights organizations—which include, contrary to the truth, violations of human rights within the country.”
“This blatant attempt to punish peaceful dissent and intimidate others unfortunately demonstrates what constitutes the truth when it comes to exercising political rights in Egypt today,” said Stork.
Ibrahim, an opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, has been jailed since he turned himself into the authorities on April 19 following a police raid on his home. The other four co-defendants went into hiding when the indictments were announced on August 7. They are Nasr Farouq al- Bahiri, a researcher for the Cairo-based Land Center for Human Rights; Yahya Fikri Amin Zahra, an engineer; Mustafa Muhammad al-Basiuni, unemployed, and Remon Edward Gindi Morgan, a student.
The case has been referred to a Higher Emergency State Security Court. These tribunals, created under the emergency law, allow no appeal to a higher judicial body; their verdicts can only be overturned or modified by the president of the republic. Article 80 (d) of Egypt’s Penal Code carries a prison sentence of up to five years on any Egyptian who “deliberately discloses abroad false or tendentious news, information, or rumors about the country’s internal situation,” or who “carries out any activity aimed at damaging the national interest of the country.” The defendants were also charged under Article 86 bis of the Penal Code, passed in a package of anti-terrorist legislation in 1992; it punishes anyone who founds or joins an organization or association “impairing the national unity or social peace.”
