Yesterday, the Emergency Supreme State Security Court in Old Cairo sentenced former lawyer and parliamentarian Ziad El-Alimi to 5 years in prison, in addition to the journalist Hisham Fouad and Hossam Moanes, 4 years in prison in the same case, and 3 years for each of Hossam Nasr and Mohamed Bahnasy, and 3 years in absentia for the researcher. Labor and trade union Fatima Ramadan.
The case that I control has a long and very strange story that reveals the extent of the lack of justice and the independence of the judiciary in dealing with political activists in similar cases.
– Also, these rulings on peaceful opposition activists make us wonder about the promises and the beautiful words that we heard during the past period, and we say where is the political breakthrough with the rulings in these cases.
What is the story of the case? What are the legal violations? And what can we see in the file of dealing with political detainees in the coming period?
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What is the issue?
Ziad Al-Alimi and those with him in the case were arrested in 2019 after they were with other leaders in the civil and democratic movement, they began discussing and preparing for the elections to the People’s Assembly that had been missed.
– At that time, the case involved arresting many people (about 20 people), one or two from each opposition movement, and making them a case known in the media as the case of the Alliance of Hope.
– But the case in which they took today’s ruling is not the case of the Hope Alliance, this is a case copied from the first case that was used this year only months before the abolition of the state of emergency and bears No. 957 of 2021.
– This is the new case in which the convicts are accused of “spreading false news at home and abroad that revealed to public opinion the illegality of state institutions.”
– The case was transferred to the Emergency State Security Court before the state of emergency was abolished, and away from the ready-made charges that are very empty in their content, but the case had procedural problems and legal violations. Another time of 10 years, I could not complete this way.
These violations can be summarized as follows:
1- From the beginning of the case, the lawyers were not allowed to copy the case papers or see them except at the court’s headquarters, and this is something that contradicts a basic right assigned to him by law, so the situation was that the lawyers do not clearly know what the case is and they can base their defense on what while the opponent is in The case, which is the prosecution, has full access to the papers, and the situation was so unfortunate that the defense lawyers had to go to the court secretary, sit down, read and summarize the case’s paper, which is about 1,000 papers, so that they know what the case is.
2- Ziad Al-Alimi and the rest of the people in the case have been in pretrial detention since June 2019, meaning this period of imprisonment ended in June 2021, but when the new case was copied, they were referred to trial based on the new case, not the case of the Hope Alliance to the Emergency State Security Court, and this is contrary to even the emergency law. According to lawyer Khaled Ali, who wrote on his page, “The case was referred to the Emergency State Security Court, although the second paragraph of Article 19 of the Emergency Law itself requires that they be tried before ordinary courts and not emergency, which is also supported by Article 15 of the Judicial Authority Law”>
3- The third violation is that the ruling that was issued was not issued in public, in violation of the law, and what states that even if the trial is secret, the ruling must be issued in public, and this is far from even the illegality of the secrecy of the trials themselves. But what happened was that the court in its session dismissed the defendants and announced that the case was reserved for judgment the next morning, but the lawyers in the defense department saw the verdict written and certified before they left the court.
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What is the situation now with regard to Ziad and the rest of the detainees in the case?
The issuance of the ruling by the Emergency State Security Court means that the ruling cannot be appealed according to the emergency law, which was suspended for nearly a month, but the ruling is not final because it is awaiting approval by the military ruler, and the military ruler can uphold, cancel or reduce the ruling
Of course, because there is no legal text that obliges the military governor to a certain period of time to decide on the ruling, in most cases he will prefer the situation to be suspended for a while.
– Of course, this exceptional situation is due to the emergency law, which in fact means that it destroys any possibility of the independence of the judiciary.
In addition to this ruling, Ziyad Al-Alimi and the rest of the detainees in the case still have another case, which is the case of Al-Amal, which still has not issued a ruling, and it is expected that it will also be referred to the Emergency State Security Court.
– Now, Ziyad, Hossam Mounis and Hisham Fouad have spent about two years and five months in the first case, but these years will not be deducted from the verdict they took now unless the investigations in the Al-Amal case are preserved, and therefore this period is deducted from the second case because it is a case copied from it.
– Or if they were excluded from the order to refer to the court in the Al-Amal case for any reason, or if they were acquitted from the Al-Amal case.
– The ruling is certainly shocking to everyone and is not subject to appeal, but there is still little hope in it that a reasonable person will convince the president or whoever delegates him not to ratify the ruling, because it is possible that this will happen and the rulings may be canceled or reduced or the trial is re-trial in another circuit, each of the powers of the President of the Republic And it is possible to remove the injustice that occurred in this case.
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– We wrote about the Al-Amal case since the first arrests of Ziyad, Hussam, Hisham and others in June 2019, and the constant question in our follow-up to the case was why is the state doing this?
– I mean, these people wanted to make an electoral alliance in order to run in the parliament elections, and to practice politics by legitimate means. Why would this happen to them?
– Those imprisoned, countries and others, were engaged in politics in legitimate legal ways, to the extent that they were imprisoned, maimed, and harmed, and they and their families, yet there are still people appearing in the media saying where is the alternative? Or where are the parties, why don’t you go down to people? Every alternative is trying to get caught and put in prison. Any party movement is trying to form, or just meetings that are dealt with like this, even if they celebrate the anniversary of the January revolution like the youth of the Karama Party who were arrested from January until today.
In any sane political system, the opposition’s participation in elections and in political action is credible and legitimate. But the regime that: It closes all the ways and means of political participation, arrests the people who operate it in peaceful and legitimate ways, arrests people who are considered expressing their opinions on Facebook, closes channels and newspapers, and blocks websites that do not abide by the security instructions sent by “Samsung devices,” and neglects the health of people who They are arrested until their health deteriorates and they may die in prisons.
Talking about a human rights strategy or a political breakthrough in light of these provisions and violations of this kind, will be questionable and wonder, who can imagine that this way will convince society and people that there is an improvement, a breakthrough, or a new policy.
– Well, really, according to what we hear, we are in a new stage, and the country needs to hear other voices. Why do we imprison these voices with fabricated cases that lack the minimum standards of a fair trial?
– If the state really returned to the stage of danger and remained stable, why do all these exceptions take root and practice the most severe types of exclusion against anyone who talks about politics.
These cannot be actions that want to make the country stable or make real progress. Certainly, in the long run, these are the seeds of extremism and terrorism when every road to hope for public, peaceful reform adheres to the law and the constitution is closed, and we go back into cycles that no one wishes for his country.
– We will come back and say that there is still a way to correct, and there are alternatives in the hands of those who hold the country to remove injustice from people who have not committed any real crime, and they do not have anything other than their political opinion, which is not really a defect, and it is not normal for him to wish for 5 years in prison.
Sincere solidarity and support with Ziad Al-Alimi, Hisham Fouad, Hossam Mounis, and everyone else in this case, and we would prefer a sane voice to come from afar and end this farce so that our country will see the path to real political, economic and societal stability.
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