Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The government closely monitored the activities of human rights organizations and restricted their work. Official investigations brought against targeted activists were kept pending, in some cases for years. The case against Hafez Abu Sa'da, secretary general of the EOHR, who had been detained for fifteen days in December 1998, remained ambiguous. The government had charged him and other EOHR members with accepting funds from a foreign donor-the British embassy in Cairo-to harm to Egypt's national interests. On February 13, several days before the EOHR was due to issue a report on renewed sectarian violence in al-Kusheh (see above), the Prosecutor-General's Office announced that it had referred the case to the Emergency Supreme State Security Court. In March, however, Prosecutor-General `Abd al-Wahed told Human Rights Watch that the British ambassador had confirmed that the funds in question were intended to support a women's legal aid project, andthat in light of this information Abu Sa'da `s "file was closed." By October 2000, however, the authorities had still not informed Abu Sa'da officially that the case was closed.

The EOHR and other local human rights groups condemned the government's extension of the state of emergency. The EOHR was among a number of human rights groups that applied for official registration under the 1999 NGO law in the first half of the year but of these, only CHRLA had been granted registration before the law was overturned by the constitutional court. Applications by other human rights groups had not as yet been fully processed. The Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) was granted legal status as a regional organization in early May under a separate agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the 1999 law was declared invalid, the Ministry of Social Affairs informed the EOHR on July 24 that its application for registration would be considered under the 1964 law and requested that it provide the necessary documentation. Several days later, ministry officials told the EOHR verbally that its registration had been granted, and gave a registration number, but on July 30 the ministry informed the EOHR in writing that the decision on its application had been deferred upon "a request from security officials."

Human rights activists preparing to monitor the People's Assembly elections also came under attack. On the night of June 30, State Security Intelligence (SSI) officials arrested Sa'adeddin Ibrahim, sociology lecturer at the American University of Cairo and director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. The SSI raided both his home and the center and confiscated documents, computers and other belongings. The authorities also arrested the center's chief accountant, Nadia `Abd al-Nur, and her assistant, Usama Hammad, and they, together with Ibrahim, were interrogated by officials of the prosecutor-general. The authorities issued renewable, fifteen day detention orders against Ibrahim and `Abd al-Nur under Military Decree No. 4 of 1992. Abd al-Nur went on hunger strike for two days to protest the conditions in which she was being held at the Womens' prison. During her first two weeks in detention, the authorities interrogated her without the presence of a defense lawyer. Prosecutors initially accused Ibrahim of receiving foreign funding without the authorities' permission, forgery of election documents, fraud and the dissemination of false information damaging to Egypt's interests, but failed to specify the legal basis for these or later accusations. The authorities questioned at least fourteen others in connection with the case, some of whom they detained for several weeks.

In early July, the authorities detained and interrogated staff of the Women Voters' Support Center, a NGO cooperating with the Ibn Khaldun Center on educational programs for voters. They included Warda `Ali Bahi and Magda al-Bey, detained without charges for six days and one month respectively. The authorities then released Sa'adeddin Ibrahim and Nadia `Abd al-Nur on bail on August 10, and others in the ensuing days, but took further action on September 24 after Ibrahim announced that he intended to monitor the parliamentary elections. The prosecutor general formally referred the case to the Supreme State Security Court, naming twenty-eight defendants, including ten who were not in custody and would be tried in their absence. Both the Ibn Khaldun Center and the Women Voters' Support Center remained closed. The trial was set for November 18.