The Giza Prosecution Office renewed the detention of eight Cairo University students for another 15 days on Thursday pending investigations, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) said.
Security forces arrested the eight students from each of their homes at dawn on 21 April, after Cairo University campus clashes between police and student protesters.
Since then, the detainees have been receiving continuous 15-day detention pending investigations.
Egyptian security forces are notorious for this arrest tactic, and have been called “dawn visitors” since the days of former president Hosni Mubarak.
The students are accused of belonging to student group Students Against the Coup (SAC), of protesting without permission, attacking public employees, and destroying public and private property.
Authorities have undertaken a fierce crackdown on students over the past two years, as security forces have killed dozens of students on-campus and arrested hundreds more, according to AFTE.
Egyptian authorities are reported to have kept the Rafah border crossing open for a third day in one direction, from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. The crossing has been completely closed since March this year.
An elderly Palestinian woman, Yousra Al-Khatib, reportedly died on Wednesday as she was waiting to cross the border into Gaza, Palestinian news sources said.
Meanwhile, Egypt experienced a heat wave in which temperatures peaked at 46 degrees celsius.
According to Egypt’s state-owned news agency MENA, the crossing was set to remain open for Palestinians going into Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, but was extended a third day.
Approximately 800 Palestinians entered Gaza through the crossing over the two days, MENA reported.
On 25 May, Egyptian naval forces opened fire on a Palestinian fishing boat and injured a man from Rafah off the coast of the Gaza strip, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported.
The border crossing had been completely closed for over approximately three months, as the Egyptian military has repeatedly evacuated the area of homes. They had also destroyed tunnels to maintain a buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza.
Archival photograph of sudent protest at Ain Shams University. (Photo from SAC)
Students resigned from the Ain Shams University Student Union, while the faculty of the School of Engineering cancelled exams on Wednesday and Thursday, after student Islam Salah Al-Din Atitu was found dead on a desert road near the Fifth Settlement district on Wednesday morning.
According to a student statement, Atitu was on campus Tuesday morning taking an exam, when an unidentified man, accompanied by a university staff member, went into the exam room and requested that Atitu accompany him to the student affairs office.
For the rest of Tuesday, family and friends did not know of Atitu’s whereabouts until family members found his dead body on a desert road near the Fifth Settlement.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Interior said, in an official statement, that Atitu was killed after clashes and a chase by security forces. The ministry also accused the student of killing police officer Wael Tahoun.
“I think there is a major contradiction between the official statement of the MOI, that he was hiding out, changing hiding places regularly, and about to flee to Upper Egypt, and the fact that he attended his first two final exams on Saturday and Tuesday at Ain Shams University. This guy was not in hiding, which casts doubt on any other detail in the statement,” one Ain Shams University engineering faculty member, who requested anonymity, stated.
The Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Ayman Ashour, said in a press statement that Atitu was present for his exams on Tuesday, but denied that the student was arrested from inside the university, according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).
The Ain Shams University faculty member also said there was no evidence to back up this claim, since “no one spotted police in uniform. The security cameras showed that he left on his own not accompanied by police.”
She added: “He could have been arrested outside though or followed.”
The Students Against the Coup movement reported a series of protests inside various university campuses on Thursday following the news of Atitu’s death.
According to a recent AFTE report, at least 22 students have died during or as a result of on-campus violence over the past two years.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi recently issued a decree which expanded the jurisdiction of military courts to include anyone who attacks the state’s “vital” facilities. The decree was widely condemned by human rights group (photo: AFP)
An Alexandria military court issued sentences against 147 defendants, including at least 12 children aged between 15 and 18, according to the National Community for Human Rights and Law.
The Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of Childhood Conditions (EFACC) stated that despite the due release of six children in this case, numbered 152/2014, the foundation maintains that all military trials of children must end.
The sentences varied, with approximately 50 people receiving life sentences, while 30 received 15-year prison sentences, seven received 10-year sentences, two received seven-year sentences, and 18 received five-year sentences. A total of 37 were found innocent.
Meanwhile, three children were declared as falling outside the jurisdiction of the court, whereas six more children received 15-year sentences, while three other children were proven innocent. According to EFACC, the charges include “offences against public property and intimidating civilians through force and violence”.
Offences such as these now fall under the jurisdiction of military courts as of a recent decree expanding the scope of military trials to include any violations against “vital state properties”.
EFACC also stated that it intends on appealing the sentences for the remaining children. In its statement, the foundation wrote, Egypt must “respect its international commitments” and especially the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
According to the Arab Network for Human Rights, a 15-year-old named Abdullah Mahmoud has been forcibly disappeared for over a month. His family has sent a number of telegraphs to security authorities asking of the whereabouts of their son, but have received no response.
Mahmoud’s family said they received a phone call from one of the detainees in an Alexandria Juvenile Disciplinary Facility who told them their son was being held in solitary confinement.
Enforced disappearances often later lead to military trials for the forcibly disappeared. This tactic of arrest has been on the rise in Egypt over the past two years, according to Amnesty International.
Likewise, military trials for civilians have risen. On 17 May, Egypt executed six men that had been sentenced to death in a military court, while civilians courts are still looking into the legality of their executions. Evidence purportedly points to some of them having been arrested prior to the date of the crimes for which they were convicted.
The Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) condemned the Ministry of Education for cooperating with the security apparatus in not allowing academics to travel without obtaining prior security authorisation.
Faculty of Science Professor Nabil Labib was banned from traveling outside of Egypt to supervise a student’s PhD dissertation.
Labib told AFTE that he went to the Ministry of Higher Education to submit the Cairo University approval for his request to travel to Hungary, where he is due to follow-up on supervising an Egyptian student’s PhD dissertation. There, he was told that he had to obtain approval from security forces before travelling.
Without security approval, Labib cannot get the Ministry of Higher Education’s approval for travel.
AFTE also expressed “extreme worry” at the continued interference of executive authorities and security apparatuses in universities, and their constraints on academic freedom.
AFTE expressed its view that this obligation of security service approval for academics and researchers before working abroad is a clear violation of Egyptian law, the constitution, and international conventions.
Amendment 21 in the Egyptian constitution reads that “the state shall guarantee the independence of universities”. Amendment 23 in the constitutions emphasises “the provision of freedom of scientific research and the encouragement of its institutions”.
The university, as an independent institution, should not be subjected to any control or pressure from the state or the security apparatus, the AFTE statement said.
This also means that academic and research work, inside and outside Egypt, “is only the concern of the academic community, universities, and research institutions”.
AFTE added that it is “unacceptable” to impose exceptions in the travel procedures of certain academics and researchers. In addition, there have been no judicial decisions banning Labib from travelling.
The association called on the Ministry of Higher Education to stop this procedure and not to involve the security apparatus, as their involvement hinders the pursuit of academic freedom.
Security forces’ on-campus presence and involvement has been on the rise for the past two years, although the severity of the crackdown was highest after the military ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi.
Academics accused of involvement or participation in on-campus political activities have been dismissed in accordance with the decree issued by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi last January. In this decree Al-Sisi amended Law 45/192, which included provisions to dismiss university professors who participate in on-campus political party activities.
In a report released in March, AFTE noted an increase in the rate of threats, disciplinary procedures and referrals to administrative investigations against teaching staff. The report cited “at least four confirmed cases” of interventions into faculty’s academics and research by universities administrations.
This handout picture released by the Italian Navy on June 6, 2014 shows migrants on a boat after being arrested and rescued by the Italian army off the coast of Sicily. The Italian navy on June 6 said it had rescued around 2,500 asylum-seekers from 17 boats in the past 24 hours as good weather conditions in the Mediterranean further boost the influx of asylum-seekers trying to reach Europe. (AFP PHOTO / MARINA MILITARE)
The European Union’s military action plans against smuggler networks “should not put the lives and rights of migrants and asylum seekers in jeopardy”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday in reference to the EU’s naval operation set to destroy smuggler boats in the Mediterranean.
Between 700 and 900 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean on their way to Italy last month, while the number migrants who have drowned at sea over the past few years number in the thousands. Since the beginning of 2015, at least 1,780 people have drowned as they were making their way across the Mediterranean.
On 18 May, the naval operation, dubbed EUNAVFOR Med, launched to identify, capture, and destroy boats that are used by smugglers in the Mediterranean. Popular EU narratives on the deaths in the Mediterranean have blamed smugglers for the hundreds of drowned lives rather than on EU policies of not saving migrants, which were introduced in an attempt to de-motivate future migrations.
Nonetheless, approximately 12,460 migrants arrived by sea to Italy in the month of May, according to the estimations of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM added that the total number of migrants arriving in Italy since January 2015 is thus 38,690.
Migrants include Eritreans, Ethiopians, Somalis, Syrians, Nigerians, Gambians and other sub-Saharan nationals.
While HRW acknowledged that “there are no easy short term solutions”, the human rights watchdog called on the EU “to increase safe and legal channels into the EU as a more effective long term solution than destroying boats”.
The group also called on the EU to assess the risk of trapping migrants and asylum seekers in Libya, as this means their continued subjection to violence. Often, the asylum seekers have “no possibility of lodging asylum claims”.
“Destroying suspected smugglers’ boats might temporarily prevent a person from boarding an unseaworthy vessel, but the consequences don’t end there,” Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of HRW, said.
“The EU needs to be honest in assessing how its intervention will push desperate people to take even more dangerous journeys, what becomes of people in need of protection seeking to leave an increasingly chaotic and violent Libya, and how this squares with international obligations.”
The EU council will begin this military operation first through surveillance and patrols and then through “boarding, searching, seizing, and diverting suspected smuggling boats, followed by ‘rendering inoperable’ the suspect boats”.
Meanwhile, the internationally recognised Tobruk government in Libya stated it opposes EU action on its territorial waters.
Egypt has also been cracking down on migrants. More recently, Egyptian border police detained 72 people, Egyptian, Sudanese, and Syrian, for attempting to cross over into Libya, where it is easier to be smuggled into Europe, state-led news agency MENA reported.
Earlier this month, more than 80 Egyptians were also arrested for attempting to cross over into Libya.
The EU is often criticised for designating more resources for militarisation and policing the Mediterranean and its borders to limit immigration, rather than on rescuing migrants’ lives.
Since the start of the academic year on 11 October, anti-government students have staged numerous protests amid a heavy security presence. Photo shows police closing the main gate of Cairo University, blocking students outside (Photo by Gehad Abaza)
Engineering student Islam Salah Al-Din Atitu was found dead on a desert road near the Fifth Settlement district Wednesday morning after security forces purportedly took him from the Ain Shams University campus the day before, according to the university’s Student Union (SU).
Atitu was taking an exam along with his colleagues when “an unidentified man, accompanied by a university staff member , asked that the student Islam Salah Al-Din Atitu go with the man to the student affairs office”, the SU statement said, adding that students had noticed the man waiting outside the exam room.
Atitu was missing for all of Tuesday after the exam, with his friends and family unaware of his whereabouts.
After news of the student’s death spread, “the Ministry of Interior broadcasted a false story stating that he was one of the terrorists that were killed in a hideout after an exchange of fire”, the SU said.
The statement went on, saying: “All of the world’s words are not enough to describe the lies, slander, and criminality that the state practices on young people. These cold-blooded killings and indictments without fair trials are fascist acts, and cannot be described as anything less.”
The students also stated that they requested that the Ain Shams University administration, specifically the dean of the school of engineering, clarify why an unknown security official was allowed inside the exam room. The university has yet to respond to the students.
Meanwhile, at least 22 students have been killed on-campus, or as a result of on-campus violence, over the past two years, according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).
Anas Al-Mahdy, a student at Cairo University, died earlier this week; on 19 April security officers beat Al-Mahdy until he went into a coma that lasted 27 days, due to brain haemorrhage.
According to AFTE, Al-Mahdy was beaten by campus security fighting alongside the police and plainclothes men with weapons. Most public universities across Egypt hired Falcon, a private security firm, to secure campuses, while plainclothes police are reported to have a large on-campus presence.
Twenty students have died due to violence on campuses across Egypt since the beginning of the 2013 academic year, according to research by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE). (Photo Courtesy of AFTE)
After the executions took place on Sunday, the families of the deceased headed to the Zeinhom morgue to receive the bodies of their relatives. (Photo by Amany Kamal)
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) condemned on Monday the “egregious human rights violations” of Egyptian authorities, including “the right to life.”
The statement was made in reference to Egypt’s execution of six young men on Sunday, “following their conviction in an unfair trial by a military court”.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian administrative judiciary postponed to 2 June an examination of a lawsuit that demanded the halt of the executions and are yet to decide on whether the execution was legal.
According to the ICJ, the military proceedings in the “Arab Sharkas” case in which these young men were executed, violated their right to a fair trial by “a competent, independent and impartial tribunal”.
Egypt’s criminal law requires that those who receive death sentences are hanged.
“Rights of defence were undermined, including the ability to have confidential access to a lawyer,” while all of the accused alleged that they had been subjected to ill-treatment and torture while detained.
The ICJ also condemned Egypt’s mass-death sentencing of approximately 109 people, including former president Mohamed Morsi, in an espionage case.
Additionally, according to previous statements to Daily News Egypt, families of the executed said that two of the defendants were arrested three days before the alleged “Arab Sharkas” confrontation took place, while two others had already been detained for three months.
“Rather than contributing to serious human rights violations, Egyptian judges should preserve the dignity of their office and act in defence of the rule of law and human rights, not as a tool of repression,” Said Benarbia, the Director of the ICJ Middle East and North Africa programme said.
The ICJ added that it opposes the death penalty under any circumstances as a violation of the right to life while the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights called on Egypt to “refrain” from carrying out the death penalty.
Other local groups, including an Anti-death penalty group, has previously called for a halt to these executions and has met with the state-backed National Council for Human Rights in attempts to put an end to executions.
The UN General Assembly has repeatedly called for a moratorium on the use of capital punishment.
The 6April Youth Movement has made protest plans for 6 June under the title “And what is the end of it?” (Photo by Mohamed Omar\File)
The 6April Youth Movement has made protest plans for 6 June under the title “And what is the end of it?”
The exact action to be taken will “remain a surprise”, spokesperson Amal Sharaf said on Tuesday.
Sharaf said the movement created this event because “things continue to go from bad to worse”.
She added that injustice has “exceeded its limits”, especially with the news of mass death sentences, executions, and increases in military trials “especially in governorates outside Cairo”.
Sharaf also referenced authorities’ “broken promises”, after authorities previously stated they would release political prisoners that include Ahmed Maher, a co-founder of the movement.
Last April, the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters ruled to ban the 6April movement for “espionage” and “activities that distort Egypt’s image”.
While Sharaf stated that she believed this event “will bring change”, and that “everyone who is against what is happening and has had enough will unite”, another 6 April member, Ahmed Orban, stated he is not very optimistic.
“Honestly, I don’t think anything much will happen, unfortunately,” Orban said, adding “but the event should focus on exposing the catastrophic failures that are happening.”
“It is a step towards rallying [political forces] and gaining the sympathy of the street once again,” Orban added.
Students clashed with security forces at Al-Azhar University following protests organised by Students Against the Coup in March 2014. (Photo by Ahmed Al-Malky)
Ahmed Ghoneim, a Students Against the Coup (SAC) spokesperson, has been missing for over three weeks and there is little his peers can do besides reach out to local rights organisations, a SAC spokesperson said on Friday.
We cannot go complain to the prosecutor general, Youssef said, adding that the prosecution is part of this system. “And if we go report this to the ministry of interior, we will probably get arrested,” he said, “we just have to wait until he faces prosecution.”
Enforced disappearances entail the state does not leave traces of these arrests, as the disappeared are not legally recorded in any prisons. Families end up with little evidence, other than the missing bodies of the disappeared.
Ghoneim is not the first spokesperson to be forcibly taken by National Security forces, Youssef said. “This has been the trend with three or four other spokespeople before him; it is not something new.”
Ghoneim was spokesperson for the movement directly after the July 2013 military ouster of former President Mohamed Mursi. He was responsible for the movement’s university spokespeople all across the country, but his involvement with the movement has decreased since his graduation a year ago.
Hazem Tarek was missing for a month before his family and friends found him in Torah Prison. “By then he had already been tortured and electrocuted,” Youssef said.
Local and international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Violence and Torture, have called for an end to enforced disappearances at various instances over the past two years.
Most victims of enforced disappearances primarily end up in a secret military prison in Ismailia, Al-Azouly prison where they are tortured and are locked in a six square metre cell with a lack of ventilation, light and sanitation,At the beginning of this academic year in October 2014, state security forces arrested approximately 40 students from their homes.
Enforced disappearances were also frequent during the Mubarak-era, as National security officers who arrested people from their homes were notoriously called “Dawn Visitors.”
