Alaa Abdel Fattah, 24 others handed 15-year sentences after highly irregular trial
The Associated Press in Cairo reported:
A court on Wednesday convicted a prominent activist from Egypt’s 2011 uprising for demonstrating without permit and assaulting a policeman, sentencing him to 15 years in prison.
The sentence against Alaa Abdel-Fattah is by far the toughest against any of the liberal, pro-democracy activists behind the 18-day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s 29-year regime. It is also the first conviction of a prominent activist since former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took office as president on Sunday.
In the 11 months since el-Sissi ousted the country’s first freely elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, authorities have launched a massive crackdown on Islamists, detaining at least 16,000 and killing hundreds. That crackdown has overshadowed another, albeit smaller, campaign against secular activists opposed to what they see as the return of Mubarak-era policies.
He was tried in abstentia, AP reported “he did turn up at the Cairo courtroom later on Wednesday and was detained by police.” But, this does not describe the strange and unjust circumstances that actually occurred. Ahramonline reported that he and other defendants were actually trying to get into the courtroom for the trial, writing:
Mona Seif, Abdel-Fattah’s sister and founder of the No to Military Trials group, said via Twitter that her brother, along with two other co-defendants, was waiting at the courthouse for permission to attend the session, but was denied entry.
Once the sentence was pronounced, the three were arrested at the courthouse for transfer to prison, Ahram Online’s reporter at the court said.
There was conflict around the judge in the trial and the demand that he recuse himself for a conflict of interest. Ahramonline explains:
Defence lawyers have criticised the ruling and complained of irregularities.
“The judge has violated criminal law procedures and did not allow the lawyers to present their full defence,” Ahmed Ezzat, a member of the defence team told Ahram Online, labelling the ruling as “politicised” and “vindictive”.
“[The ruling] is mainly meant to exact revenge from Alaa and the others because they asked for a recusal of the bench in the case,” said Ezzat, also a legal advisor in the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.
Abdel-Fattah was fined last month for demanding the recusal of the judge whom he accused of involvement in ballot-rigging under former president Hosni Mubarak.
The Daily News of Egypt reported more details of the bizarre procedures used in the trial, conviction and arrest of Abdel-Fattah:
Lawyer Mahmoud Belal said the verdict was abrupt and the defendants were not called into court in time for the issuance of the verdict. He said two of the defendants, Abdel Fattah and Mohamed Nouby, were arrested in an implementation of the verdict. A third defendant, Wael Metwalli, was arrested shortly afterwards.
Seif Al-Islam Hammad, lawyer at the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and Abdel Fattah’s father, denied that the defendants’ arrest was carried out by an arrest warrant. He said that it takes days for the court which issued the decision to notify the concerned police authorities with the said decision, adding that Wednesday’s swift arrest of the sentenced defendants is a “mysterious” case.
“The only explanation would be that the concerned police station, the Azbakeya Prosecution, sent an employee to attend the session and immediately carry out the decision,” Hammad said. He added that if such were the case, it would imply a “premeditated intent” to issue the imprisonment verdict.
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The judge issued his decision at 9.10 am without calling in any of the defendants or their lawyers, Hammad said.
Hammad described Wednesday’s verdict as “hasty”. The defendants will now challenge the court ruling in front of the same judicial circuit which issued the ruling. Should the ruling be upheld, the defendants will be allowed to appeal it at the cessation court.
“I believe Alaa [Abdel Fattah] was arrested today to keep him in custody during the period of challenging the verdict,” Hammad said, adding that the process of challenging the verdict and appealing it could take up to years.
The Daily News of Egypt reports this is not his first arrest for protesting Mubarak and military regimes that have followed:
Abdel Fattah had been legally prosecuted during the former regimes of Morsi, for allegedly inciting violence against Muslim Brotherhood members, and former president Hosni Mubarak. He was also detained for two months in 2011 under the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Charges he faced then were for allegedly assaulting soldiers during the attacks carried out by army forces against a predominantly Coptic protest outside the Maspero building in October 2011.
The conviction comes shortly after the inauguration of President El-Sissi, the military general who has led a crackdown on dissent. Associated Press reported that these convictions are part of a pledge El-Sissi made about freedom of speech and the right to assembly being less important than stability and economic progress.
El-Sissi has said that he intends to uphold the protest law and that freedom of speech will have to take a back seat while he gives priority to restoring security and reviving the nation’s ailing economy.
In his inauguration speech on Sunday, he said freedoms must be structured within “religious and moral principles” and criticism must be objective and free of slander.
“Anything below that is anything but freedom and instead is anarchy that appears well intentioned on the surface but is not in actual fact,” said the 59-year-old el-Sissi. In a thinly veiled threat to activists, he said there would be zero tolerance for anyone who wants to “disrupt our march toward the future” or anyone who seek “a spineless state.”