CAIRO: Three Egyptian journalists and a lawyer were charged by a criminal court Wednesday for denouncing state-sponsored fraud in last year s parliamentary elections, judicial sources told AFP. Wael Al-Ibrashi and Hoda Abu Bakr, both journalists with the independent Sawt Al-Umma weekly, were charged with slandering a local electoral commission chief and publishing the names of judges allegedly involved in fraud. Similar charges were brought against Abdel Hakim Abdel Hamid, the chief editor of Afaq Arabiya (Arab Horizons), considered the mouthpiece of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, as well as a lawyer close to the Islamist movement, Gamal Tag el-Din.
Egypt s High State Security Prosecutor Hisham Badawi issued the referral The publications had claimed they had obtained the list of judges accused of being involved in rigging electoral results from the lawyers syndicate, where the Muslim Brotherhood is well represented. Opposition movements and election observers had cried foul following the November-December parliamentary polls that saw President Hosni Mubarak s ruling National Democratic Party retain a firm grip on power. Two reformist members of the judges syndicate, which is tasked with supervising elections, faced disciplinary action last month for bringing the judiciary into disrepute by alleging that some of their colleagues had helped rig the results. Their summons had sparked an unprecedented wave of support from opposition groups for the judges, who have come to symbolize the drive for democratic reform in Egypt. One of the judges, Mahmud Mekki, was acquitted, and the other, Hisham El-Bastawissy, was censured by the disciplinary tribunal after a string of demonstrations, whose brutal repression by police drew international condemnation. Agencies
