CAIRO: More than four months after the annual World Refugee Day at the American University in Cairo was disrupted by gang violence that left one man dead outside the university premises, the state prosecutor has agreed to bring the case to trial on Nov. 6.
But friends and family of the eight defendants insist they were innocent bystanders swept up in a frantic police crackdown following the murder, which occurred during a fight between two Sudanese gangs, the Outlaws and the Lost Boys.
“The men that the police arrested were not the ones who were involved in the fighting, said Mohamed Bayoumi, a lawyer representing the defendants. “The ones who committed this crime ran away before the police arrived, so the police just arrested anyone who was there.
“The ones they arrested are innocent. They did not do anything, he added.
Seven of the men are charged with possession of knives, a crime which carries a sentence of three months to one year in prison. One of the defendants is charged with “accidental murder, for which he may face seven to ten years in jail.
According to witnesses to the attack, a gang of Sudanese men wielding machetes attacked another Sudanese man on the sidewalk outside AUC’s Greek Campus, hacking at his arms and head.
After the assault the gang of attackers quickly dispersed, leaving the victim, identified in as Taha Malea Fealjour Bekam, on a sidewalk streaked with blood.
Police arrived soon after and began arresting all the Sudanese men they saw in the vicinity in what some have described as a random, hurried manner.
One of the defendants, Essam Eddin Jubbara, was arrested while hailing a taxi near the university, according to friends. He had been working as a volunteer at World Refugee Day and was leaving with two Sudanese friends when they were detained by police.
He and his friends are among those charged with weapons possession, but friends say it is impossible that Jubbara or his friends were involved in the attack.
They say none of the three were involved in the gangs, and that Jubbara, who is recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, was an upstanding member of the refugee community. He spent his free time helping out his fellow refugees and babysitting, according to friends, and was supposed to start his studies this semester at Cairo University.
They additionally point out that both the Lost Boys and the Outlaws are based in the Cairo neighborhoods of Maadi and Ain Shams, but Essam lived in Bab El-Louq and had little contact with those communities.
“The people who committed this crime must be laughing, said Peroline Ainsworth, a friend of Jubbara. “They’ve arrested the wrong people.
As for the two men arrested with Jubbara, they do not live in Egypt at all, and were only visiting from Sudan to attend a training course hosted by EgyptAir.
According to Bayoumi, the lawyer for the defense, the state prosecutor’s office takes special interest in cases involving Sudanese refugees because they are afraid that the community will organize more demonstrations like the 2005 protest in Mustafa Mahmoud square.
Thousands of refugees took part in a high-profile sit-in in the Mohandiseen roundabout that year, which ended in a bloody crackdown by state security forces in which as many as 30 refugees, mainly women and children, were killed.
“After the violence that occurred at the square, they are always afraid that the Sudanese are going to organize another demonstration, he told Daily News Egypt. “They are just scared.
Estimates on the number of refugees in Egypt vary wildly. According to the UNHCR, it has officially registered 45,000 refugees in the country, mainly from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq. But some independent estimates push that figure to as many as three million.
