Tag: ayman nour

Witness in Egypt’s Nour case found hanged in jail

Posted on By 3arabawy

From Reuters:

One of the key witnesses and defendants in the trial of Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour was found hanged in his prison cell in central Cairo on Thursday morning, security sources said.
Ayman Ismail Hassan, who during Nour’s trial retracted his testimony against the politician, hanged himself with a sheet in the prison where he was serving a five-year sentence on a charge of forging documents, they added.
Hassan said he had made up his testimony under pressure from state security police, who had threatened members of his family.
“I confessed to forgery under pressure from officers from state security,” Hassan told reporters on June 30, 2005, after his lawyer told the court he had changed his plea to not guilty.
The court disregarded his retraction and went on to sentence both Ayman Nour and Ayman Hassan to five years in prison.
Nour, who came a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s first multi-candidate presidential elections in September 2005, says the authorities fabricated the case against him to exclude him from politics.
The charge against Nour was that the endorsements he submitted to the authorities when he set up his liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party in 2004 contained forged signatures.
Gameela Ismail, Nour’s wife and a party official, said that Hassan, who was in his late 30s, was being held alongside prisoners who had been condemned to death and had complained to his family of mistreatment in prison.
“He kept telling them that he had important information to give to the public prosecutor,” she told Reuters.
PARTY VOLUNTEER
Amir Salem, the lawyer who defended Nour in the trial and who has been trying to secure his release on health grounds, told Reuters: “He (Hassan) was the only person taken alone and put in the Appeals prison (in central Cairo), and according to his family he complained constantly of ill treatment.”
“He was the only person in the Ayman Nour case who insisted on retracting his statements against Ayman Nour, and he admitted twice in front of court that all his statements were contrived,” Salem said. “(The judge) refused to pay attention.”
Hassan had already served almost two years of his sentence, plus months in pre-trial detention. Prisoners in Egypt typically leave jail after serving two thirds of their time.
Gameela Ismail said Hassan originally came to the party as a volunteer, offering to recruit members. He was a laborer and a bachelor who looked after his sisters and his nieces, she added.
Nour was sentenced on Dec. 24, 2005, and the Egyptian government has rejected repeated U.S. appeals for his release.
In his absence the liberal and secular party he founded has struggled to survive.
Nour, 43, the most influential non-Islamist politician opposed to the Mubarak family, won 8 percent of the vote in the presidential elections of 2005, against 89 percent for Mubarak. Human rights groups say the elections were seriously flawed.
Political analysts said the government wanted him out of the way so that the Mubaraks can prepare for the installation of Mubarak’s son Gamal, who is also 43, as the next president. Gamal denies having presidential ambitions.

Gamila Ismail: Police assault Dr. Nour in court

Posted on By 3arabawy

From Reuters:

The wife of jailed Egyptian opposition politician Ayman Nour, the main challenger to Hosni Mubarak in a 2005 presidential election, said he was assaulted by security men on Saturday in a courthouse stairwell.
“He was beaten up in the court,” Gameela Ismail told Reuters. “They dragged him on the stairs … They dragged him and pushed and pulled him.” An Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no knowledge of any incident involving Nour, a diabetic who has heart problems but has so far failed to win an early release on health grounds.
Nour came a distant second to Mubarak in Egypt’s first multi-candidate presidential election in 2005. He is serving a 5-year jail term after being convicted of forging signatures to found his opposition Ghad party. He says the criminal charges were fabricated to keep him out of political life. He campaigned against Mubarak on a liberal secular platform and won 8 percent of the vote.
Nour had been in court in relation to a wrongful termination lawsuit he filed several years ago against a newspaper where he had worked as an editor until 2001, Ismail said.
She said Nour’s lawyers had reported that he was dragged and beaten when he refused to walk up several flights of stairs. He had asked to take the elevator, complaining of joint problems, she added.
Ismail said he told his lawyers that he had been assaulted by three officers, and that Nour’s lawyers had seen bruises on his legs and wrists.

Nour’s saga continues

Posted on By 3arabawy

Mubarak’s regime, it seems, is planning to keep on trying Dr. Ayman Nour till he dies in prison.

Jailed Egypt politician questioned on new allegations
Aziz El-Kaissouni
CAIRO, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Imprisoned Egyptian politician Ayman Nour has been sent back to jail after being questioned by prosecutors on a number of new allegations, including defaming President Hosni Mubarak, his wife said on Sunday.
Gameela Ismail told Reuters Nour, 41, was also being questioned on suspicion of insulting religion and mocking God, among other charges.
Several months ago, Nour’s Ghad (Tomorrow) Party newspaper provoked an outcry for publishing a number of articles that were deemed offensive to religion.
Nour did not write the articles and publicly disavowed them, but his status as the chairman of the newspaper’s board means that he can be held legally liable.
His wife will also be questioned despite the fact that she has no official role at the newspaper, although she informally supervises its activities.
Nour, who came a distant second to Mubarak in last year’s presidential election, is serving a five-year term for filing forged papers to set up his Ghad Party in 2004. He says the charges were fabricated to drive him out of political life.
The U.S. government and human rights groups criticised the trial and sentencing of Nour, who campaigned against Mubarak on a liberal, secular platform.
Nour is scheduled to undergo cardiac catheterisation on Monday, to determine whether his heart condition will require stent implants or bypass surgery, Ismail said.
Stents are small tubes used to prop open arteries.
Nour, who is diabetic and dependent on insulin, has been bleeding from his eyelids for several days due to an overdose of anticoagulant prescribed by prison doctors in preparation for Monday’s procedure, his wife said.
He was scheduled to undergo the cardiac catheterisation last week, but was returned from hospital after being told the procedure required the personal approval of the interior minister, his wife said.
Nour’s lawyers have formally asked that he be released on medical grounds, but have received no response.

UPDATE: From Reuters:

Egypt opposition leader has heart tests under guard
CAIRO, Dec 19 – Imprisoned Egyptian politician Ayman Nour underwent heart tests under tight security and police kept his wife Gameela Ismail away from his hospital room.
An Amnesty International representative who was with Ismail outside the hospital on Monday said Ismail managed to speak to him for a few minutes only through a closed and blinded window.
Ismail later caught a glimpse of Nour from an ambulance window after police hurried him out though a back door of the Cairo hospital and started to drive him back to prison, Amnesty International’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui told Reuters.
“There were things that were really unnecessary. She (Ismail) just wanted to see her husband and make sure he was in good health,” said Sahraoui, who is deputy project director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Nour, who is serving a five-year jail term on fraud charges which he says were fabricated to force him out of politics, had the cardiac catheterisation procedure at Kasr el-Aini government hospital, Ismail told Reuters.
“They (police) refused to let us communicate with him. They even refused to let me in to pay the 700 pounds ($120),” said Ismail, who spent most of the day outside the hospital.
A photograph in the independent newspaper Al Masry Al Youm showed Nour, 42, lying in his hospital bed and smiling. Ismail said one of the patients in the same room took the picture.
The aim of the test was to find out whether Nour, who has a history of arterial problems, needs heart surgery or stents to hold his arteries open, she said. He has had the same procedure done several times and had arterial expansion in 2003.
Nour was the main challenger to President Hosni Mubarak in elections in September 2005, when Egypt had the first contested presidential elections in its long history.
A secular liberal, he came a distant second with about seven percent of the popular vote. Independent election monitors said irregularities were widespread.
Since his imprisonment in December last year and without his daily presence and leadership, his Ghad (Tomorrow) Party has lost much of its dynamism, political analysts say.
Nour and his colleagues say the authorities trumped up the charges against Nour because he was the most significant potential threat to a presidential bid by Mubarak’s son Gamal Mubarak, who is almost exactly the same age. Gamal and his father say they have no plan for Gamal to seek the presidency.