Hossam el-Hamalawy
The NYC-based rights watchdog has issued a statement denouncing the one-year-prison sentence handed down by a military court to Member of Parliament Talaat Sadat.
The nephew of Egypt’s late president Anwar el-Sadat had his immunity lifted, and was prosecuted by the military, for “defaming Egypt’s army.”
A military court sentenced today MP Talaat el-Sadat (nephew of Egypt’s late dictator Anwar el-Sadat) to one year in prison with hard labor, for “defaming” Egypt’s army in a TV interview where he claimed his uncle was killed in a conspiracy involving the Egyptian army, and foreign intelligence services.
Eight rights group had denounced the trial saying it’s violating the right to free speech.
UPDATE: Here’s an AP report:
Nephew of late Egyptian leader Sadat gets 1-year sentence for defaming armed forces
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD
CAIRO _ The nephew of the late President Anwar Sadat was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday for defaming Egypt’s armed forces, less than a month after he gave an interview accusing Egyptian generals of masterminding his uncle’s assassination.
The unusually rapid prosecution effectively terminates Talaat Sadat’s role in parliament as an outspoken government critic.
Sadat, 52, who had accused the government of prosecuting him for political reasons, was taken into custody immediately after the verdict, said his aide, Mohsen Eid, and court officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Media were not allowed into the courtroom and Egyptian newspapers have been instructed not to report his trial, which has come under criticism from the State Department as harmful to freedom of expression.
There is no appeal against military court verdicts. Sadat’s only option is to appeal to President Hosni Mubarak.
Sadat is the second prominent political opponent of the government to be sentenced to prison within 12 months. Last December, Ayman Nour, the leading challenger in last year’s presidential elections, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for forgery after a trial that was internationally regarded as failing to meet standards of due process.
Within minutes of the sentencing, Sadat’s supporters shouted outside the court: “This is injustice!” “This is unlawful!”
Sadat had pleaded innocent to charges of “spreading false rumors and insulting the armed forces.”
In an interview broadcast on Oct. 4, Sadat said there had been an international conspiracy to assassinate his uncle, and the conspirators included some of Anwar Sadat’s personal guards, Egyptian generals, as well as the U.S. and Israel. He did not name the generals.
“No one from the special personal protection group of the late president fired a single shot during the killing, and not one of them has been put on trial,” Sadat told the Saudi TV channel Orbit.
The day after the broadcast, Sadat was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and his trial began Oct. 11.
Anwar Sadat was shot dead by Islamic militants in the Egyptian army during a military parade in Cairo on Oct. 6, 1981. The soldiers were opposed to Sadat’s landmark peace treaty with Israel of 1979.
I meant to post this a while ago:
Six countries bar public from budget process-study
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Six countries keep their constituents in the dark about the state of their budgets until they are adopted, a new study released on Wednesday showed.
The International Budget Project, formed within the private Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, released the first Open Budget Initiative 2006, an index of 59 countries on how well they open their budget books to the general public.
“The lack of access to information is a sign of unwillingness to be accountable to your citizens, an unwillingness to engage in a debate about a government’s financial activities,” said Pamela Gomez, project director for the study.
Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Mongolia and Vietnam bar any public participation in their budget deliberations, while 25 of the countries polled fail to hold public hearings on the budget, the study showed.
Of the countries surveyed, 39 percent provide either minimal, scant or no information to citizens on their country’s budget, the group said.
The study’s finding show a very large number of countries produce the information but do not make it available to the public, Gomez said, adding that “they are producing it for internal use or for reporting to donors.”
“That was very much a surprise to us because we had expected that they would not be producing it at all,” she said. Rather, they do have the resources to produce the information, but “they choose not to to do so.”
Only six of the countries — France, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, provide extensive information necessary for government accountability, the study said.
“Access to information on government financial activity in their budget is absolutely crucial to control corruption, crucial to improving delivery of services and essential for democratic accountability,” Gomez said.
The survey of the countries consisted of 122 questions and was conducted by non-governmental researchers or research organizations. The work was completed in October 2005.
The group intends to repeat the study every two years and expects it to be next published during the last quarter of 2008. The group plans to expand the number of countries to 80.