By Mai Shams El-Din
CAIRO: Lifting the travel ban imposed on foreign defendants involved the illicit funding case of civil society organizations seemed to spell a deceleration in the escalating case.
But with news of referring five workers in a major Salafi religious NGO to criminal court, the case seems to have been reignited.
Five workers in Ansar Al-Sunnah Al-Muhammadeyah charity organization, the second largest Salafi NGO in Egypt, will be referred to criminal court on allegations of receiving illegal foreign funding from Gulf countries and spending said funds in “unknown activities,” Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted judicial sources as saying on Tuesday.
According to a report published previously by a fact-finding committee formed by former Minister of Justice Adel El-Guindy, the Salafi organization received LE 296 million from Kuwaiti and Qatari charity organizations, describing it as the biggest amount of money donated to an Egyptian NGO in 2010 and 2011.
The judicial sources reportedly said that the case was referred to the Prosecutor General’s office, to be referred to the Appeals Court which will appoint a panel of judges to begin hearing the trial in a criminal court.
The Prosecutor General’s official spokesperson was not available for comment at press time.
Forty-three defendants working in five non-Egyptian NGOs were referred to the Cairo Criminal Court, charged with operating without licenses and receiving illegal foreign funding.
The trial is scheduled to resume April 10.
The Ansar Al-Sunnah Al-Muhammadeyah released a statement on its official website Tuesday, with official documents showing the permissions granted by the Egyptian authorities for it to deal with other NGOs in the Gulf region.
The statement also showed documents proving that the charitable Salafi organization is a licensed NGO according to documents signed by the Ministry of Social Solidarity.
“The [financial] support given by my country to Ansar Al-Sunnah Al-Muhammadeyah charity organization [has been going on] for a long time, and supervised by the Kuwaiti Embassy in Cairo and Ministry of Social Solidarity,” the statement quoted Kuwaiti Ambassador to Egypt, Rasheed El-Hamad, as saying.
These donations are meant to support the poor, orphanages and other charity fields, he added, denying allegations of financing the political activity of Islamists during Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections.
The statement also quoted the Qatari Ambassador to Egypt, Saleh Al-Boua’neen, denying allegations of providing financial support to Islamists in Egypt.
The executive director of aid at the Ben Mohammed Al-Thani Charitable Organization in Qatar, Khalil Mohammed El-Zeer, said in the statement that the Egyptian Salafi organization only received $338,000, not the millions the judicial fact-finding committee claimed it had acquired.
The fact-finding committee report said that the nature of the charity activities mentioned by the Salafi organization do not match the amount of funding it received.
The organization’s official statement did not list in detail the amount of money spent in relation to the amounts of funding.
Only 70 civil society organizations are working in line with Egyptian law, the official Middle East News Agency MENA said on Wednesday, quoting Legal Consultant of Ministry of Social Solidarity Mohamed El-Demerdash.
Investigations Judge Ashraf El-Ashmawi said in a conference in February that the foreign funding case is not only restricted to foreign NGOs, but to Egyptian NGOs including religious organizations receiving foreign funding from Gulf countries.
Workers of other Egyptian NGOs previously interrogated in the case denied to DNE any developments, adding that they were not notified of any court referrals.
The decision to lift the travel ban placed on the foreigners charged raised hopes that Egyptian authorities intended to tone down the escalation, but fears are mounting of provoking the Salafi political current if members of this NGO are taken to court.
“The political leadership in Egypt decided to escalate the matter since it allowed the judiciary to intervene; the escalation cannot be stopped now,” lawyer and law professor Hossam Lotfi told DNE on Wednesday.
“According to the Egyptian penal code, investigating a case must be completed once the process of referring defendants to court has begun,” he said, adding that there is no place for “compliments” in Egyptian law.
Al-Nour Party Spokesman Nader Bakkar told DNE Wednesday that the party never received any foreign funding to finance its activities.
“We appreciate the rule of law, and if anyone is referred to court, law must be implemented and we trust the judiciary,” Bakkar said, adding that the party’s finances are completely legitimate.
“We send our financial reports periodically to the Central Auditing Agency and we are open for any possible investigations to show our financial position,” he added.
Lotfi said the fundamentals of the NGOs case up to now show that it is about administrative violations, echoing arguments by defense lawyers in the case who demanded it be referred to a misdemeanor court.
Civil rights lawyers, on the other hand, requested upping the charges against the defendants to espionage and threatening national security, raising the possible sentence to the death penalty.
“Until now, we have no legal basis to prove that the case could be considered as espionage,” Lotfi said.
