Mahalla trial resumes today

The trial involving the remaining 49 defendants from the April 6th strike resumes today. It was originally reffered by the Public Prosecutor to the State Security Court in Tanta on June 6th and the trial began on Aug 9th, when the defence managed to postpone the trial in order to be able to read the prosecution material. They didn´t manage to get the defendants out on bail though.

I´m much too tired to write anything half decent right now, crawing for bed, but i want to give you some reading material about the trial and then i will follow events more thouroghly as they develop.

Amnesty International issued a statement just prior to the second session was about to begin on Sept 6th, were the charges are stated, and includes:

Assembly of more than five people with the aim of disturbing public order and security; deliberate destruction of public and private property; ransacking and theft; violent resistance and assault on police officers during the exercise of their duties; and illegal possession of firearms.

If convicted they face up to 15 years’ imprisonment.

AI calls upon the proper authourities to end the processs in the Supreme State Security Court, which is a emergency court, without the normal legal safeguards for the defendants. AI calls on the authourities to hold the trial in a normal court of law that offers the defendants the opportunity of a fair trial.

Amnesty International is urging the Egyptian authorities to:

* rescind the decision to refer the defendants to the emergency court and order a retrial before an ordinary court and ensure they receive a fair trial.
* release immediately and unconditionally those protestors found not to have used violence; the others must be given a fair trial in accordance with Egypt’s obligations under international human rights law and standards.
* open a full, independent and impartial investigation into the killings of the three people in Mahalla. In particular the investigation should focus on the circumstances in which police used lethal fire and ensure that any officers or other officials responsible for using or ordering excessive force should be brought to justice.

Arabawy gives us an eyewittness account from the first court session in Tanta on Aug 9th here

Sarah Carr gives us an equally important account from the opening of the second session on Sep 6th here.

Sorry for the poor quality of blogging, but it´s more important that you have the tools, than me packaging it neatly right now.

You can also use the fustat search and look for the words April 6th, General Strike Mahalla and Burg al Arab and you will find more material.

Beheiri , Fayoumy and Amin released from Burg al Arab

Karim al Beheiri , Kamal al Fayoumy and Tareq Tareq Amin, the Ghazl al Mahalla workers that were detained in connection with the April 6th strike was released from the Burg al Arab prison on June 1st.

"We were subjected to electric shocks, to beatings and there was no food and or drink for the first few days," blogger Karim el-Beheiri told AFP a day after his release. "We went through weeks of torture and humiliation."

Beheiri, Tarek Amin and Kamal al-Fayoumy, three worker activists, were arrested on April 6 at the Misr Spinning and Weaving company in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla after riots which left three people dead and hundreds detained.

An interior ministry official confirmed the three had been released but denied they had been mistreated.

"These are false accusations," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Everything took place within a framework of human rights."

I´ve been living in my own bubble for the last ten days , working on a presentation that i had yesterday, so i didn´t hear about it until this instant, more on this as i catch up with this happy piece of news.

Mabrouk Karim, Kamal and Tareq!

Letter from Burg al Arab prison

This is the letter from the three detained workers from Mahalla, Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin and Karim El-Beheiry who are being held at Burg al Arab prison. This was provided in translation by Amnesiac and Sami Ben Gharbia posted it on Global Voices advocacy. Originally in Arabic by Yasari Masri here

I´ve been meaning to post this yesterday. It´s addressed to the judges club and their dynamic chairman, Zakaria Abd al Aziz. I will post it in it´s entirety below. Burg al Arab is one of the toughest prisons in Egypt, another prisoner of Burg al Arab is of course Abd al Karim Nabil Soliman, aka Kareem Amer, the blogger sentenced to four years on for insulting Islam and the President. His been facing some very rough treatment during his stay at Burg al Arab.

Let´s not forget Kamal, Tareq , Karim and Karim.

We, three political detainees, address the letter below to the Judges’ Club and its head Zakareya Abdel Aziz from the Borg el-Arab Prison in Alexandria…

Dear Sir,

A week has passed on our hunger strike and we are extremely weak. We are appealing to you as the last and only resort for all who have suffered injustice in Egypt.

We would like in the beginning to correct certain information which has reached the press about our (the three of us) having been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of our hunger strike.

The truth is that we are still in prison after the administration refused to call an ambulance to take us to hospital, and as a result of the inability of Karim el-Beheiry and Tareq Amin to stand on their feet - as a result of their extreme weakness. Instead, a “nurse” was summoned to examine Karim, whose condition has seriously deteriorated.

We would like to know the reason why we remain in detention. We will continue the hunger strike until we either die or receive this information.

We were tortured in the state security headquarters in Mahalla on the 6th, 7th and 8th April. Officers tortured Karim using electricity while Tareq Amin and Kamal el-Fayyoumy were insulted verbally and physically assaulted. We then spent eleven days in Borg el-Arab prison in a cell with individuals with criminal convictions. When the Tanta court ordered that we be released we were held for four days in the El-Salam police station [noqtat shorta] situated between Mahalla and Tanta before we were taken to Borg el-Arab prison were we began our hunger strike.

From our detention cell, we call on you and all political currents to take action and apply pressure in order to secure the release of all those detained in connection with the events of Mahalla.
Signed
Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin, Karim El-Beheiry
Detained workers from Mahalla
Borg el-Arab Prison
Wing 22, Cell 5

UPDATE: The chairman of the Judges Club, Zakaria Abd al Aziz has written a letter to the Public Prosecutor requesting him to open an investigation into the matter of the three detainees in Burg al Arab.

UPDATE II

A second letter from Burg al Arab by Kamal al Fayoumy, Tareq Amin and Karim al Beiheri can be found here (Arabic). This came as an investigation began at the Mahalla Prosecution Office of six workers at the Ghazl al Mahalla factory, in connection with the events of April 6th. The six included Kamal al Fayoumy and Karim al Beheiri from Burg al Arab ,as well as Gehad Tammam, Mostafa Fawda, Gamal Abul Assad and Wael Habib, the last one, being the only one present during the investigations.

He is charged with various offences under Article 124 of the Egyptian Penal Code, including inciting other public sector employees to go on strike, possession of documents, interrupting work in the factory, and conspiring with others to print documents which led to the events of April 6.

Why isn´t Tareq Amin included in the group? And why wasn´t anyone, but Wael Habib present?