CAIRO: The final day of the proceedings of the Muslim Brotherhood military trial attracted a large crowd of the group’s supporters, journalists and local and international human rights activists who wanted to observe the proceedings or draw media attention to the trial.
Among the attendees was high-profile American peace activist Cindy Sheehan.
This motley crew loitered around the gate of the Hikestep Military Base, where the trial was held last Monday, and huddled in small groups in its parking lot.
Young Brotherhood members, dressed in well-tailored suits, drank tea from small plastic cups while chatting with rights activists like Samieh Khreis, a distinguished member of the Jordanian Bar Association, and representative of Amnesty International. Reporters munched on potato chips and talked about the weekend’s big football victory with skinny young soldiers who did not seem to know why so many people were hanging out at their post.
A large billboard of President Hosni Mubarak stood overhead, its poster flapping loosely in the wind blowing unobstructed across the bare landscape. When a strong gust blew the poster to the ground Brotherhood members cheered, soldiers ran over to pick it up, and reporters took notes.
With no news leaking out of the proceedings into the parking lot, Sheehan was the real star at the base on Monday, and came there straight from the arrivals gate at Cairo International Airport.
Sheehan came to Cairo as part of a delegation that includes Mahdi Bray, a longtime human rights activist and president of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation, as well as former US Congressman and civil rights leader Walter Fauntroy.
The group was invited to Egypt on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood by the Lawyer’s Syndicate, which is dominated by MB members.
Unable to enter the court room to observe the proceedings, a jetlagged Sheehan and Bray gave a parking lot press conference denouncing the military tribunal and calling for an end to human rights abuses in Egypt.
“I’m disturbed about military courts because of the lack of transparency, and I’m disturbed about them because I do believe that military tribunals are only used so that the government can get the results it wants, said Bray in separate remarks to Daily News Egypt.
The defendants currently standing trial at Hikestep were previously charged with the same crimes before a string of civilian courts in three separate trials, all of which resulted in acquittals. The men were arrested and charged for a fourth time by a military court on the day of their third acquittal, before they were even able to leave the court house.
“Let’s face it, these men represent the opposition to the current regime, said Bray. “And so we have a situation here where the military court will now do the government bidding that a civilian court refused to do.
“Civilians should be tried before a civilian court, and military personnel should be tried before military courts, he said. “This is not a complicated idea, it’s pretty basic.
The judge presiding over the year-long military trial of 40 Muslim Brotherhood members, Ahmed Abdel Fatteh, brought the proceedings on the remote Hikestep military base to a close on Monday, ordering the defense team to rest their case.
Abdel Fatteh is expected to announce the verdict against the men, seven of whom are being tried in absentia, on February 26.
The defendants in the case include some of the movement’s most prominent members, including its third in command, Khayrat El Shater.
El Shater and his 39 co-defendants have been accused of a shifting array of charges that at different times included terrorism, money laundering and undermining the constitution.
Those three charges have since been dropped, and the most recent ones made against them include membership in a banned organization and possession of banned literature.
Monday’s proceedings stretched for over 12 hours, and with the exception of the defendants themselves and members of their immediate families, all civilians were barred from entering the court room or approaching the military facility.
“I hope that while we are here we can do a lot of media work to put pressure on the Egyptian government to treat these prisoners better and to also alleviate their punishment, Sheehan told Daily News Egypt.
Sheehan rose to fame in the United States in 2005 after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in June 2004, after only five days of active duty. She gained prominence as a critic of the war and its architect, George W. Bush, when she began a five-week long sit-in outside the US president’s Texas vacation home in summer 2005, a year after her son died.
Sheehan demanded to speak to the president about his reasons for the war, a request that was never granted.
For several weeks she lived in a tent outside Bush’s Crawford, Texas estate, and attracted widespread media attention. She was dubbed “the peace mom by round-the-clock cable TV news coverage, and several thousand people traveled to support her, including many who camped out with her by the roadside.
Sheehan quickly became the face of the American anti-war movement, but publicly quit that role due to what she calls her “disgust with the “corruption of the American political system.
Since then, she has embarked on a worldwide speaking tour calling for an immediate withdraw of all American soldiers from Iraq and continuing what she calls “a campaign against American imperialism.
Statements like those, as well as visits to countries considered antagonistic to the United States, such as Cuba and Venezuela, have turned her in to a controversial figure in the United States.
She says she hopes that some of her celebrity can be put to good use in the campaign for human rights around the world, a cause she is pleased to be working for here in Egypt.
Sheehan says she has come to Egypt to draw parallels between American policies, such as its treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and its foreign aid relationship with Cairo, and the human rights abuses she says are perpetrated by the Mubarak regime.
“Part of why I am here is to draw attention to the parallels between the military courts here and the same thing that is happening in the US with the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, she says. “If this becomes the standard for the world, and there is no international outcry, then everyone is in big trouble
She says the United States has a responsibility not to interfere in Egypt’s affairs, and that means not using its foreign aid money to pay for human rights abuses to attacks on democratic movements.
“There’s no relation between American aid and human rights, not in Egypt, which is a major recipient, or in Israel, where we don’t tie it to how they treat the Palestinian people, she says.
“If America really wants to promote democracy in this region then we cannot silence the voices of the Muslim Brotherhood because they’re the moderate voice here and they are the ones who are actually working for democracy.
