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  Egyptian Activists Detained for Defending Rights of Religious Minority and Denouncing Torture (10/18/07)  Judges Become New Focal Point for Egyptian Advocates (5/18/06)
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Egyptian Activists
Punished for Advocating Reform
Amr Tharwat was the coordinator of the ICDS’s initiative to monitor the elections for the Shura Council (Egypt‘s upper house of Parliament) that took place in two rounds on June 11 and June 18, 2007. His arrest prevented him from carrying out his monitoring activities. Tharwat is also a member of the Quranic Group, a peaceful religious movement that “advocates reform in the Muslim world.” The arrest of Amr Tharwat coincides with a series of attacks on the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its chair and founder Saad Eddin Ibrahim. In the past few weeks, ICDS’s electronic communications have been intentionally disrupted and the state-controlled press has launched a campaign of slander and defamation against Dr. Ibrahim and his associates. These attacks appear to be in reprisal for Dr. Ibrahim’s public support for subjecting U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt to human rights conditions. Call on the Egyptian authorities to release Amr Tharwat and his relatives immediately and unconditionally and to stop its intimidation campaign against the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its staff.
On May 30, 2007, before dawn, Amr Tharwat, a researcher at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies (ICDS) was arrested by State Security Officers at his family’s home in the Matrya neighborhood in Cairo. Amr Tharwat is the coordinator of the ICDS’s initiative to monitor the elections for the Shura Council (Egypt‘s upper house of Parliament) that took place over two rounds on June 11 and June 18, 2007. Along with Amr Tharwat, the State Security officers arrested his cousin, Ahmed el-Sayed, and confiscated files, books and computers that were found in the apartment. On the same night, another relative of Mr. Tharwat, Abdellatif Mohamed Said, was also detained by the Egyptian authorities. Two days earlier, on May 29, they had arrested Ahmed Dahmash and Abdelhamid Abdelrahman, and on June 17 it was Ayman Abdelrahman’s turn to be apprehended. Ahmed El-Sayed was released after being interrogated but the five other men are still detained. Mr. Tharwat and the other detained men are members of the Quranic Group, which is a peaceful religious movement that stresses the importance of religious interpretations based on the Quran over those derived from other traditional sources, the Sunna and the Hadith. The group’s objective, according to its website, is to “advocate peaceful reform in the Muslim world based on democracy and human rights and to offer practical strategies for such change.” Its founder, Ahmed Subhi Mansour, a former al-Azhar University scholar, lives in exile in the United States, where he was granted political asylum in the 2002. Dr. Mansour convened a weekly public gathering at the Ibn Khaldoun Center that discussed issues relating to Islam and politics and other social issues until the Center’s closure by the Egyptian government in June 2000. After three weeks of incommunicado detention during which the fate and whereabouts of the five men remained unknown, their lawyers were notified last week that their clients’ case has been referred to the High State Security Prosecutor who charged them with “insulting religion.” For the first time since their arrest, the five men were finally allowed, on June 21, to see their families and meet with their lawyers for few minutes. The detention of Amr Tharwat appears also to be part of a larger crackdown that has targeted the Ibn Khaldoun Center and those associated with it in the past few weeks. For at least three weeks, outgoing communications from ICDS have been blocked. ICDS’s emails and faxes to its staff abroad and international human rights groups have been intercepted or altered. Based on previous similar problems, ICDS staff suspects that the Egyptian authorities are involved in the obstruction of its external communications. In recent days, the government-controlled press has launched a virulent campaign of slander and intimidation against the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its chair and founder, prominent academic and human rights advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim. A series of articles in different state media outlets urged the authorities to once again close down the Ibn Khaldoun Center and accused Dr. Ibrahim of being a “traitor” and a “collaborationist” because of his efforts to subject U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt to human rights conditions. This media campaign coincides with a complaint against Dr. Ibrahim submitted last week to the Public Prosecutor by a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, Nabil Luca Bibawi accusing the ICDS chair of “spying” and “damaging Egypt’s economic interests.” During a meeting in Prague in early June between U.S. President George Bush and human rights and democracy activists from 17 different countries, Dr. Ibrahim asked President Bush to pressure the Egyptian government to implement the reform commitments President Mubarak made during the presidential election campaign in 2005. Ibrahim also implored President Bush to link U.S. aid to Egypt to the pace of Mubarak's socio-political reforms and to the release of all political prisoners in Egypt. On June 22, 2007, the US House of Representatives passed the 2008 appropriations bill and decided to withhold $200 million of the $1.3 billion military assistance package to Egypt for the fiscal year 2008 until U.S. Secretary of State certifies that “Egypt is taking steps to address human rights concerns by reforming its judiciary and training its police as well as addressing concerns about the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza.” The 2008 appropriations bill is currently being debated in the US Senate. This is not the first time that the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its members have faced government reprisal for their human rights and pro-democracy activities. In 2000, Dr. Ibrahim and several ICDS researchers were imprisoned and prosecuted for their election monitoring activities. Dr Ibrahim and ICDS staff members were brought to trial before an Emergency State Security Court. Ibrahim was convicted on charges of “receiving foreign funding without permission”, “disseminating false information abroad” and “misappropriation of funds”, and sentenced to seven years' hard labor. In 2003, following an international campaign to support him and intense pressure from the international community, Egypt’s Court of Cassation declared his earlier trials improper and acquitted him and his associates of the Ibn Khaldoun Center of all charges. The Center reopened later that year. His Excellency President Husni Mubarak I am writing to express my deep concern about the continued detention of Amr Tharwat, Abdellatif Mohamed Said, Ahmed Dahmash, Abdelhamid Abdelrahman and Ayman Abdelrahman and the continuing harassment and interference with the work of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies (ICDS). As you are aware, Amr Tharwat, a researcher at the Ibn Khaldoun Center, was arrested on May 30, 2007 by State Security Officers at his family’s home. Amr Tharwat was the coordinator of the ICDS’s initiative to monitor the elections for the Shura Council that took place on June 11 and June 18, 2007. Along with Amr Tharwat, the State Security arrested his cousin Ahmed el-Sayed and confiscated files, books and computers that were found in the apartment. On the same night another relative of Mr. Tharwat’s, Abdellatif Mohamed Said, was also detained by the Egyptian authorities. Two days earlier, on May 29, they had arrested Ahmed Dahmash and Abdelhamid Abdelrahman and on June 17 it was Ayman Abdelrahman’s turn to be apprehended. Ahmed El-Sayed was released after being interrogated but the five other men are still detained. Mr. Tharwat and the other detained men are members of the Quranic Group, which is a non-violent religious reformist movement whose objective, according to its website, is to “advocate peaceful reform in the Muslim world based on democracy and human rights and to offer practical strategies for such change.” After three weeks of incommunicado detention during which the fate and whereabouts of the five men remained unknown, their lawyers were notified last week that their clients’ case has been referred to the High State Security Prosecutor who charged them with “insulting religion.” For the first time since their arrest, the five men were allowed on June 21 to see their families and meet with their lawyers for ten minutes. The detention of Amr Tharwat appears to be part of a larger crackdown that has targeted the Ibn Khaldoun Center and those associated with it in the past few weeks. For at least three weeks, outgoing communications from ICDS have been blocked. ICDS’s emails and faxes to its staff abroad and international human rights groups have been intercepted or altered. Moreover, the government-controlled press has recently launched a poisonous campaign of slander against the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its chair and founder, prominent academic and human rights advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim. A series of articles in different state-controlled media outlets have urged the authorities to close down the Ibn Khaldoun Center and accused Dr. Ibrahim of being a “traitor” and a “collaborationist” because of his efforts to subject U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt to human rights conditions. This campaign of slander coincides with a complaint against Dr. Ibrahim submitted to the Public Prosecutor by a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, Nabil Luca Bibawi accusing him of “spying” and “damaging Egypt’s economic interests.” The detention of Amr Tharwat and his four colleagues and the ongoing harassment against the Ibn Khaldoun Center and its chair clearly aim to prevent them from performing their peaceful human rights activities and punish them for advocating democratic reform in Egypt and for exercising their right to non-violent freedom of expression and belief. The imprisonment of the Amr Tharwat and his colleagues for exercising their basic rights and freedoms as well as the harassment against the ICDS constitute serious violations of Egypt's Constitution and its obligations under international law. The Egyptian Constitution states in Article 46 that “the State shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practicing religious rights.” It adds in its Article 47 that “freedom of opinion shall be guaranteed. Every individual shall have the right to express his opinion and to publicize it verbally, in writing, by photography or by other means of expression within the limits of the law. Self criticism and constructive criticism shall guarantee the safety of the national structure.” Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) ratified by Egypt in 1982 states that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.” Article 19 of the ICCPR declares that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference," and adds that "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice." The attacks against the Ibn Khaldoun Center are also clear violations of the
Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on
December 9, 1998. Article 6 of the Declaration states, for example that "everyone
has the right, individually and in association with others a) To know, seek,
obtain, receive and hold information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms…(b)
As provided for in human rights and other applicable international instruments,
freely to publish, Your Excellency, we strongly urge you to immediately and unconditionally release Amr Tharwat, Abdellatif Mohamed Said, Ahmed Dahmash, Abdelhamid Abdelrahman and Ayman Abdelrahman who are detained for exercising their basic rights and freedoms. We also call on you to intervene to put an end to the campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies and ensure that its staff can freely perform its peaceful activities without any fear of retaliation. Thank you for your attention to these very important matters. I will continue to monitor this case closely.
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UPDATE: On October 6, 2007, the Egyptian authorities released Amr Tharwat and his colleagues after detaining them for 130 days.