Just imagine the footage: Israeli soldiers faced with a peaceful protest pull a woman from the crowd, drag her painfully along the ground exposing her breasts, and a brutal soldier stamps his booted foot on her chest. The world would have exploded with anger and rage. There would be demonstrations outside the Israeli embassies of capitals and angry denunciations in all the press. Quite right too. But when the Egyptian army does that to that a young pro-democracy protestor in Cairo, there is indeed coverage but no outraged condemnation of what happened or the naming of names of the senior army officers in Egypt who should be held to account. Instead, the foreign secretary William Hague issued yesterday the blandest of bland statements. ‘The unrest of recent days shows the scale of the challenges which Egypt’s political system must address including the need to build full respect for human rights,’ was all the he could say.
Unrest is putting it uber-mildly. Thirteen people have been shot dead by the army acting on orders and hundreds wounded since Friday prayers last week. A military dictatorship is revealing itself in Egypt aided by Islamists with that ideology’s extremely limited concept of freedom and democracy. We do not know the name of the young woman who was humiliated by the military thugs obeying the orders of Field Marshall Tatanawi and other senior Egyptian army officers who should be placed on a visa ban list along with Burmese generals. But we do know the name of the 26-year-old Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil. He is now on the 118th day of a hunger strike that may claim his life. Nabil began earlier this year by blogging that ‘the Egyptian army and the people are of one hand’ – that the two were working together for democracy and human rights for Egypt. He changed his mind and later wrote that the army and the people were ‘no longer of one hand’ when he saw the army repressing protestors. For publishing this incontrovertible journalistic truth he was charged with ‘insulting the Egyptian military’ and a military tribunal convicted him last April in a fake legal process. Last week in a retrial – amid the renewed brutality in Tahrir Square – his conviction was upheld.
Nabil had earlier rejected an offer of freedom in exchange for a confession of his alleged ‘criminality’. The tribunal’s decision has since been condemned by Reporters without Borders and other NGOs, while the US State Department reported that the US continues to ‘urge the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to reconsider this verdict’ adding, ‘We call on the government to protect the universal rights of all Egyptian citizens, including the right to free expression’. It would be good if William Hague and Baroness Ashton could add their voices to that of the US. I have written to the Egyptian ambassador in London but have not had the courtesy of a reply.
Faced with the Egyptian army’s refusal to respect his right to freedom of expression, Nabil announced that his hunger strike would now be limited to consumption of water. Before he would at least have juice. His sacrifice is also in protest that Egypt’s ruling military council has tried 12,000 people in the post-Mubarak era – more civilians than were tried during all of Mubarak’s rule! Moreover, these army-controlled tribunals claims above a 93 per cent conviction rate – the remaining percentage can be accounted for by matters not yet having gone to trial.
Throughout history military tribunals dealing with civilians who irritate the generals work on the basis not of presumption of innocence but a presumption of guilt. There is no right to a trial before an independent and impartial judiciary, as the Egyptian tribunal is an agent of the army. There is no right to cross-examination of witnesses or evidence, as no consideration of the evidence is permitted. There is no right of appeal. Nabil and the 12,000 Egyptians now in prison had no right to their own lawyer – only to a tribunal-appointed lawyer, who called for Nabil’s confinement in a psychiatric prison. This is Soviet-style justice at best but anyone who has examined the handling of trials in the Nazi era can see from where the Egyptian generals have been inspired.
Canada’s former minister of justice Irwin Cottler MP, a noted professor of law at McGill University, is acting as Nabil’s international counsel. It would be good if British lawyers could also take up his case and save his life. William Hague should call in the Egyptian ambassador and demand Nabil’s immediate liberation. And British generals who have hosted their Egyptian fellow army officers should place some calls to Cairo and say that the Egyptian military will be covered in shame if Maikel Nabil dies at their hands.
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Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and a former minister for Europe
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