The trial of Police Captain Islam Nabih and Corporal Reda Fathi–the Bulaq el-Dakrour Police Station sadists who tortured, sodomized driver Emad Kabeer and filmed the abuse to further the humiliation–is expected to come to its final chapter, with a verdict to be issued this Monday, 5 November, at Dar el-Qadaa el-Aaly, 9am.
On December 8, the Administrative Court will issue its verdict regarding Judge Murad’s demand to ban 51 blogs and websites, deemed “harmful for national security and insulting to the president.” The list includes my blog.
More details in the following HRINFO statement.
From the Daily Star Egypt:
Kamal Abbas, the director of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), a high-profile labor rights group shut down by the authorities last winter, was sentenced to one year in prison for defamation.
The case was filed against both him and a freelance writer for the group’s magazine, after it published allegations of corruption against a Cairo youth center which later proved to be true.
Both Abbas and the writer, Muhammad Helmy, were sentenced by the Helwan Misdemeanor Court, but remain free pending an appeal which will be heard on Dec. 26.
The charges were published in Kalam Sanay’iya, the magazine of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, which was shut down in March after the state accused it of threatening national security by encouraging workers to strike.
In the article, Helmy alleged that the management of the 15th of May Youth Center was corrupt, and laid the blame on Muhammad Mustafa Ibrahim, the chairman of its board and a member of the National Democratic Party who was once a parliamentary candidate.
When the article appeared, Ibrahim sued both Helmy and Abbas for “public abuse” and “defamation of his capacity as a public representative.”
The author claimed inside knowledge of the center’s operations because he was also a member of its board of directors, and, along with four other board members filed a complaint against Ibrahim before Cairo governor Abdel Azim Wazir last year.
Wazir assigned a task force to investigate the charges, which released a report last January confirming Helmy’s allegations of financial misconduct and recommending that Ibrahim be removed from his position.