Two months for torturing suspects

Yet another case of policemen tried for torturing suspects in 2011 , this time with the twist of two policemen actually getting a sentence.

So what was the case about:

Investigations had revealed that the two policemen arrested two bearded brothers at an airport in February 2011 and tortured them at Almaza Prison to force them to confess that they belong to terrorist organizations.

And what about the sentence for doing this to the two innocent brothers one might ask? Two months with hard labour with the option of paying L.E. 500 (amounts to 725 USD) bail for a suspended sentence. On top of that , it´s most likely they will also keep their work as policemen.

For sake of not being too onesided in dealing with this story, the tortured brothers will get compensated:

The court also ordered the defendants to pay 10,000 pounds (1,450 US Dollars) as a temporary compensation to the alleged victims.

For as long as anyone can remember the culture of impunity towards the endemic human rights violations taking place in police stations , prisons and security camps , this was the case during the Mubarak years and the case of Khaled Said , whom was tortured to death by policemen in Ibrahimiyya, Alexandria in June 2010 was one key trigger of the January 25th revolution 2011 , Jan 25th being police day in Egypt.

The years since the Jan 25 revolution in 2011 has not changed that in any way. The lack of reform within the police is one of the most frustrating and disapointing aspects of the last 30 months.

For more on torture in Egypt since 2005 , including the case of Emad al Kebir. read here.

Wael Abbas on BBC´s Hardtalk

The Egyptan blogger Wael Abbas was interviewed by Zeinab Badawi on BBC´s flagship show Hardtalk , for those who wants to see the full 23 minutes interview, it can be found here.

Philip Rizk released

Philip Rizk was released in the early hours of Wednesday, February 10th, and is at home with his family.

This was the message , originally posted on the facebook page in support for his release.

Philip is out, he is safe and home with his family.
He requests that all upcoming planned protests and marches still take place to end siege on Gaza.

More details to come soon.
Please do not call the family members at this time.

Almost 100 hours after he was smuggled out of Abu Zaábal police station in a Suzuki microbus, by the very people whom are supposed to protect the safety of the Egyptian people, an hour later at a police security checkpoint at Qalaq all traces of Philip ended, until last night when he was on the phone with his parents, and then released.

Happy 27th birthday tomorrow , Philip!

This is a proper moment to pay homage to the unsung heroes of laywers who seldom gets the recognition they deserve, in this case HMLC and ANHRI laywers in particular, as well as people like Mostafa Hussein and others, they are the ones, together with people like Philip that makes me think that Egypt might have a bright future, regardless of it´s current state.

More later.

Update: Though Philip has been released there´s still others whose not, one of those is 22-year-old Diaddin Gad student in Gharbeiyya, Gad is also a blogger and activist involved in the latest protests on a local level against the war in Gaza , and Egypt´s policies towards the war. He´s a member of the Wafd party as well as Kefaya. He was picked up from his house on Friday, and is like Philip held at an undisclosed location. He might not have the network and international backing that Philip had, but it pleases me to see that both the BBC and AFP has written about his case, lets hope for an equally happy and speedy ending to his ordeal as with Philip.

Human Rights Film Festival in Um ad Dunya

As you all know , the 32nd Cairo International Film Festival is taking place in Cairo , this week, but a much more interesting development is The first Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, that begins today, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights around the Globe, culminating on December 10th, the day of the original signing of the most important of all U.N documents.

This is the first such festival in Egypt, if i´m not totally wrong , but Human Rights Film Festivals is not a new phenomena, the Human Rights Watch has held a festival on the same theme for years, and earlier this year the Arab Gulf had it´s first in the form of the first Bahrain Human Rights International Film Festival took place in Manama.

The Cairo Human Rights Film Festival is organized by the American Islamic Congress and it´s Middle East Director Dalia Ziada in partnership with the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development and the New Woman Foundation and will feature seven films in an equal amount of days.

The opening film is Democracy in Dakar, on the impact of youth culture in the political context of Senegal´s Presidential election in 2007, Tomorrow follows the Egyptian film Guáwa al Shabaka about the internet freedom, or lack there off and blogging for human rights in Egypt, feauturing Gamal Eid, Noha Atef, Abd al Moneim Mahmoud, Ahmed Maher, Muhammad Gamal and others, directed by Mahmoud Saber and created by Muhammed Gamal.

Among the other films is Stephen Johnson´s animated film from 1988, explaining the 30 articles of the UDHR(view it here, in 31 different languages, arabic being one of them here.

The final film is the Egyptian classic al bab al Maftouh, based on Latifa al Zayyat´s novel, portraying Laila, played on screen by the legendary actress Faten Hamama. Laila, of course, being as important today , as when it was first published, has been an inspiration for the Egyptian blogger project , Kolena Laila.

Three other films are also part of the festival, The Elders, A force more powerful and Confronting the truth.

All the films are followed by seminars, and all are free of charge. The schedule is available here.

For those who can´t join the festival, you can view the film Guawa al Shabaka below(via Sami Ben Gharbeia). Thanks to Dalia Ziada and the AIC for this very good iniative.I also agree with Dalia, that this is a splendid way of celebrating the mother of all declarations, here, were the cradle of civilization once had it´s humble beginning , at least with Egycentric eyes.

Nora Younis receives Human Rights First award

Nora Younis will receive the annual Human Rights award from the Human Rights First Organization when they celebrate their first 30 years as an organization in New York tomorrow. She will share the prize with Oleg Kozlovsky, a young democracy activist in a country that slides further from the straight path of democracy for each day it seems. Senator Ted Kennedy is also awarded for his long and distinguished career as a human rights defender.

Human Rights First have been very suportive of human rigths in Egypt, during the last years and Campaigned for Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who won the same award in 2002 Alaa and Kareem among others, and i would like to extend my greetings and humble thanks for your support on this happy occasion.

This is how they describe Nora:

... When Egyptian soldiers used water cannons and nightsticks to brutally evict Sudanese refugees from a public square in Cairo, Nora Younis was there, taking notes and shooting photos. Her blog of the incident drew international attention to the Egyptian government's abuses against these vulnerable refugees. Nora continues to raise awareness about rampant human rights abuses in Egypt through her compelling blog posts.

1000 Mabrouk ya Nora!!

Strings attached to Muhammed Refaát´s release

It seems that the Egyptian blogger Muhammed Refaát has been , or about to be released, subject to conditions from State Security that would restrict him from ever updating his blog or his facebook account. Taking his story to the media or to Human Rights organizations, this according to al Doustor( the fact that he talks with al Doustor would of course disqualify him from following the terms).

He has been in prison since July 21 st, though ordered released by the state security on August 17th, but he was not released, instead an order was issued for him to be held under the ever so flexible Emergency Law.

It´s of course absurd that State Security could even contemplate setting preconditions for his release, but then again this is the Kafkaesque state of Egypt 2008.

More on this later.

Living in Washington?

If i was living in Washington, this is what i would be doing today!

The Project on Middle East Democracy(POMED) is hosting an event with the headline - Egypt Today: The State of Human Rights and Rule of Law

It´s a panel made out of Michele Dunne - Editor of Arab Reform Bulletin, at Carnegie Endovment, Neil Hicks from Human Rights first, Marc Lynch(A.K.A Abu Aardvark) and Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes, among other things a former Ambassodor to Egypt.The whole event is moderated by Stephen McInerney, Director of Advocacy, Project on Middle East Democracy.

For me , the star without a shadow of a doubt is Michele Dunne, her knowledge of Egypt is profound,on a level few western scholars can compete with. Marc Lynch, for me is more of a specialist on Islamic political movements than Human Rights and Rule of Law, being a very able blogger, he has found a niche for himself in describing blogging in a political context and perhaps especially so when writing about the Ikhwhan bloggers. In terms of Egypt his field has been Ikhwan,modernity and democratization. He´s been focusing more on Iraq lately, the Awakenings and other Sunni political movements, correct me if i am wrong. To end my presentation of Abu Aardwark, i must say that i miss the times when he used to spend plenty of time disecting the relationship between popdivas, the Arabic pop equivalent of the three Tenors, except for the fact that hate each other, or so goes the myth - Nancy, Haife and Ruby used to be the hottest topic over at Abu Aardvark, nowadays, one has to make due with the occasional hip-hop lyric namedropping.... please ya Marc, write about the Divas once in a while...

To set you in the right frame of mood for this serious topic, after me losing my way, humming ¨Ana Haifa ana¨ you should read Michele Dunne´s newly penned piece in the American Interest - A Post-Pharaonic Egypt You could also read something from the other aisle of Think tank Washington, Jeffrey Azarwa from the American Enterprize Institute and judge for yourself, his piece is called - The Autumn of Mubarak , the article was just published in the Weekly Standard. Least but not last i throw in an article by Scott Carpenter on the highly politisized queston on the future of U.S Aid to Egypt, the Military part of it was something current U.S Ambassador Margaret Scobey to Egypt commented on only yesterday.

It begins at 14:00 eastern time(in about an hour) - i´m sure there will be a transcript as well.

UPDATE: Here is Marc Lynch´s part of the opening discussion, focusing on describing the political scene in Egypt.

UPDATE II: Here is a link to the full discussion, unfortunately Neil Hicks couldn´t take part in it.

FIDH annual Report on Human Rights 2007

The International Federation for Human Rights isssued their annual report on the state of Human Rights around the globe today.

The three pages on Egypt highlights the constitutional amendments, the neverending emergency law and the coming anti-terrorism law. It points out the cases of Ibrahim Eissa and Abd al Kareem Amer to illustrate the situation of journalists and bloggers. Restrictions on NGO´s examplified in the closure by the authorities of NGO´s dealing with human and workers rights like the Assosiation of Human Rights and Legal Aid(AHRLA) and te Centre for Traqde Union and Workers Services(CTUWS)is another important topic in the report.Outside the timeframe of this report, The case of the government against CTUWS has been ruled as without merit by the Administrative Court in Giza on March 30th 2008, and the court has stated that there is nothing legally stopping the CTWS from being handed their NGO-status. The authorites has yet to comply as to my knowledge.

The whole section of the report, dealing with North Africa and the Middle East can be found here(26 pages PDF, Egypt on pages 9-11)

Amnesty Inernational report 2008

The Human Rights organization Amnesty International has issued it´s annual report, it paints a bleak picture of the state of human rights around the globe in 2007. Our neighbourhood, the Middle East and North Africa follows that pattern.

When it comes to Egypt, 18 000 remains in administrative detention, though around 530(mostly of the former militant islamists, challenging the state between 1992-97)was released during 2007. Torture and ill-treatment led to at least 20 cases of death during the same year.

I would like to stress two issues that are very important, but renders little attention. The cases of African refugees/migrants that is being shot at by border security personell on a weekly basis, while they try to cross the border to Israel. Six people died from July to December 2007, and the trend continues, with people dying on at least a monthly basis, the amount of cases, were people are being shot at are significantly higher than that, and one may ask if the border security personell is implementing a policy of shot first, ask later. It´s there role to safeguard the border, but to kill desperate people(some of them from Darfur)in a haphazard way is not in any way contributing to a safer border.

The issue of violence against women is also a question that needs to be addressed in a massive way, the urgency of the issue could not be stressed enough. This is an issue were much more attention, education and resources needs to be comitted. The quote below, from the report shows how urgent and important it is.

Violence against women claimed 247 lives in the first half of the year, according to an Egyptian NGO. In November the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) said sexual harassment was on the rise and that two women were being raped every hour in Egypt. It also said that of 2,500 women who had reported cases of sexual harassment to ECWR, only 12 per cent had made a complaint to the police. The official National Centre for Social and Criminal Research confirmed that sex crimes were on the rise,but could not provide figures.

The whole part focusing on Egypt in the report can be found here.

Court of Cassation dismisses officers appeal in Imad al Kabir case

The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal by officers Captain Islam Nabih and Corporal Reda Fathi, and upheld the November 5th 2007 verdict of the Giza Criminal court of three years of inprisonment for the two men on charges of illegal detention, beating and rape of Imad al Kabir at the Boulaq al Daqrour precinct on January 18 2006.

The case was seen as a landmark case in convicting police officers for torture, though the sentence was the minimum sentence in such cases,and it was made possible in part because the policemen filmed the rape, for later use in order to shame Imad al Kabir among his co-workers,little did they know that the mobile phone clip, instead of only being showed only to co-workers ended up in the public domain on the internet, and became prime evidence.