CAIRO: Rights groups have renewed calls for the release of detainees held under the emergency law, pursuant to a May amendment that restricted application of emergency powers to narcotics and terrorism cases.
Speaking in a press conference organized by Hashd, the Popular Democratic Movement for Change, on Tuesday, lawyer Haitham Mohamedein from the Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence said that a sample of detention cases examined by lawyers revealed that the majority were being held on suspicion of involvement in political or religious activities.
Both instances fall outside the scope of emergency law powers as amended by a May presidential decree.
Mohamedein said that the majority of the estimated 10,000 individuals being held in administrative detention are held “without any charges being directed against them” and are detained “simply because an officer suspects him, or for involvement in a non-serious incident which could be dealt with under the ordinary law like a fight, or possession of a weapon.”
Mohamedein added that even where someone is suspected of terrorist activity, “powers given to the police under the penal code are sufficient to address terrorism crimes without the need to resort to emergency measures.”
Likewise, the Nadim Center lawyer explained that the May amendment restricting emergency law powers to terrorism and narcotics cases only applies to terrorist organizations and drug gangs and cannot be used against individuals.
“As an exceptional law, the emergency law can only be used against exceptional crimes which cannot be addressed by ordinary legislation,” Mohamedein explained, adding that the use of emergency powers against individuals not affiliated with a bigger organization is a misapplication of the law because “they do not represent a threat to national security.”
In May the government pledged to release all detainees being wrongly held under the emergency law by the end of June 2010, but by June 30 there were unconfirmed reports of less than 500 people being released.
There were further releases of detainees from Sinai earlier this month including Mosaad Abu Fagr, a writer and a high-profile Bedouin rights activist who had been detained without charge since the end of 2007.
Ahmed Raghab, a lawyer from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, said that Abu Fagr’s continued detention, in violation of some 20 release orders, “is a prime example of how the state uses emergency law powers against its citizens.”
Relatives and friends of individuals who remain in detention without charge under emergency law powers spoke during Tuesday’s press conference.
All of the detainees whose cases were discussed during the conference were, according to their friends and relatives, detained because of involvement in non-political religious activity.
Hassan Abdel-Aziz said that his nephew, 34-year-old Mohamed Ezzet Khadr, a Master’s student from Damietta, was arrested “simply because he grows his beard and follows the Sunna.”
Abdel-Aziz said that Khadr was arrested in February of this year and held for a month in a state security investigations facility in Damietta. He was then transferred to state security investigations in Cairo before being returned to Damietta.
Khadr was then taken to Abu Za’abal Prison under an administrative detention order. Lawyers succeeded in securing a judicial release order in June, and Khadr was transferred to the Damietta Security Directorate, where he remained for five days before he was returned to Abu Za’abal.
“All of this just because he says there is laa ilahha illa Allah [there is no God but Allah],” Abdel-Aziz said, adding that Khadr is a well-liked member of the community involved in charity work with no previous convictions.
Rights groups have repeatedly condemned the extensive powers given to security bodies under the state of emergency, in force since 1981, which are used indiscriminately and systematically.
Member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council called on Egypt to end the state of emergency during examination of Egypt’s human rights record in February of this year. The government is currently in the process of drafting a counter-terrorism law to replace application of the emergency law.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Raghab criticized the draft law and warned that it will make the powers afforded by the exceptional, and in theory temporary emergency law, “a permanent part of ordinary legislation.”
