CAIRO: Ayman Nour’s trial was a circus, complete with baying audiences, strongmen keeping ravenous hordes at bay and cages being rattled in a desperate attempt at freedom.
The problem is, the trial’s entertainment value was as dubious as its outcome, or credibility.
Apart from a very few exceptions, no one will ever really know if Nour is guilty or not, but there will be even fewer people who will accept the court’s decision.
This whole trial has been a see-saw of doubt and suspicion. If the intent of the court was to uphold justice, then it was very badly handled. If its intent, as is alleged by both Nour supporters and myriad independent spectators, was merely to discredit Nour, then it was even more of a failure.To many, he’s become a symbol of the fight against injustice; the ultimate reformer. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a mess.
Nour, the head of El-Ghad opposition party was charged earlier this year with forging the signatures needed to gain legal recognition for his party. His trial began on June 28th and it’s been a media circus ever since.
To start with, in a singularly unfortunate case of miscasting, the judge appointed was Adel Abd El-Salam Gomaa. Judge Gomaa had gained international fame as the judge who’d found American University in Cairo professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim guilty of ‘damaging Egypt’s reputation abroad’ in 2002. One would have thought that the international hoopla – and ensuing embarrassment – over that trial would have sent little warning bells off, in some government media office, somewhere.Apparently not.
This trial did not start auspiciously. Seven people are being tried along with Nour, five of whom alleged that he pressured them into forging the signatures, another is being tried in absentia and the seventh later retracted his statement just two days into the trial, clearing Nour. He claimed that state security had pressured him into lying about the case. It took two attempts for Gomaa to allow the retraction on record.
The defense team alleged that the judge was biased.What is on record is that Gomaa apparently refused to grant defense requests for access to important documents, among them the forged signatures. The defense also railed against the judge’s initial refusal to allow them to subpoena an official of the Public Audit Bureau who had been witnessed discussing plans with another defendant to ‘entrap Nour in the forgery scheme,’ according to a Human Rights Watch report. Gomaa eventually consented, but the count of apparent irregularities tallied up by Human Rights Watch, among other groups, continued to rise.
Add to all this the fact that lawyers (including, unfortunately for Nour, his own) journalists and El-Ghad supporters were often kept out of court because there simply wasn’t enough room for them due to the hordes of plainclothes policemen and security personnel in court.
In September, the circus apparently paused for a commercial break. Nour, out on bail, campaigned against President Hosni Mubarak in the country’s first ever multi-candidate presidential election. There were ten candidates in all, but Nour was the only one to make significant headway; he placed second against the President, garnering a surprising 8 percent of the vote in elections that were generally recognized to be fair and accurate.
It’s unclear what’s happened to his support base in the few months since then, but according to the results of the last parliamentary elections, he couldn’t even keep his constituency in Bab El-Shariaa. Unlike the presidential elections, the parliamentary ones, steeped in violence and corruption, have not been above suspicion.
All the best circuses attract out of town visitors. This one hasn’t been any different. Back in January when Nour was first arrested, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated Washington’s displeasure by canceling a visit to Egypt, straining relations.The US has consistently expressed its displeasure over the trial. The White House went as far as releasing a statement on Christmas Eve calling for Nour’s release and saying that his detention ‘cast doubt on Egypt’s commitment to democratic reform and the rule of the law.’
Of course, one could always point out that the country which set up Guantanamo is in a terribly tenuous position to talk about the ‘rule of the law.’ More practically, one could take a look at the recent Washington Post editorial that suggests the US show support of Nour by whipping the $ 1 billion in military aid that we receive from under our noses.
Not that the locals aren’t having fun. Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, Essam El-Erian – himself fresh from a stint at the government’s hospitality – announced the group’s support of Nour. “Political rivalries, he told AFP, “should be handled in a civilized manner.
What exactly, has been achieved with this trial? Nothing good. It’s allowed the US to pontificate on freedom and democracy, imposing its point of view, again, on our domestic policy. Nour’s guilt or innocence, at this point, is almost incidental. The trial has been handled with such heavy-handed ineptitude that it has been stripped of any credibility. Ultimately, it is not the approval of the United States or other nations that the government must earn. It’s the approval and trust of its own citizens. For someone to uphold the law,one must believe in its infallibility. Egyptians need to believe in the independence of the judicial system. They need to believe that the courts are a haven of integrity – not a fighting pit for venting grudges.
Nour’s case will probably be taken to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest appeals court.While the integrity of the Court of Cassation has managed to survive relatively unscathed, it is not unknown for its decisions to be overturned. Whatever its rulings in this case, any attempt to overturn them would be a mistake.
Ultimately, like so much in this country, it boils down to accountability. The legal system is there to protect citizens. The judiciary is accountable to the people. The only loyalty expected of the judiciary is to the people, independent of any political or religious affiliation.
Mirette F. Mabrouk is Publisher of The Daily Star Egypt.
