Tag: courts

Talaat Sadat sentenced to one year in prison

Posted on By 3arabawy

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.

Rights group calls for end to death penalty

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AFP…

An Egyptian human rights organization has called for the abolition of capital punishment, on the fourth annual World Day against the death penalty.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights called for an end to the death penalty in Egypt due to the procedure being a “failed deterrent of crime” and “because of Egypt’s history of unfair trials,” director Hossam Bahgat said. “This year has seen some negative developments for the case against the death penalty here,” said Bahgat.
In June, two Egyptian brothers sentenced to death for leading a drug-trafficking ring were hanged.
“That was an unfair trial. No appeal was allowed and the defendants had claimed that their confessions were extracted by torture,” said Bahgat.
And in September, three suspects in Egypt’s deadly Sinai bombings were sentenced to death.
“Again, there was no appeal in that case,” he said.
Both cases were tried in front of the Emergency state security court that allow defendants no access to lawyers, and no right of appeal to a higher court.
A report issued by the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), which groups 141 human rights organizations throughout the world, said that Egypt’s terrorism acts, which carry the death penalty, “are broadly and vaguely defined.”
“As a result individuals are judged for loosely defined crimes in tribunals which lack the basic guarantees of a fair trial on charges for which they may pay with their life,” the 2005 report said.
“Because of Egypt’s history of unfair trials, there is no grey in area in wanting to abolish the death penalty. Even supporters of the death penalty should want to see it end here,” Bahgat said.
In Egypt, crimes punishable by death include terrorism related crimes, premeditated murder, rape, and drug related offenses.
There are no reliable figures on the death penalty in Egypt but according to the latest government report, between 25 and 50 executions were carried out each year between 1999 and 2003.
According to Amnesty International, 382 death sentences were recorded between 1996 and 2001. However, the organization believes the actual number to be much higher than those recorded.

3 Sinai bombings suspects sentenced to death

Posted on By 3arabawy

Taba Hilton Destroyed

Three suspects charged in the bombings of Taba were sentenced to death few minutes ago, by a State Security Court in Ismailia.

AP report on the trial:

Egypt sentences 3 suspects to death
By ASHRAF SWEILAM
Thursday, September 7, 2006
ISMAILIA, Egypt — A state security court Thursday sentenced three members of an Islamic militant group to death for their role in several attacks in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula that killed dozens of people in the past two years.
Judge Ahmad al-Khashab of the Supreme Emergency State Security Court read the verdicts of the three of 14 defendants, then adjourned the case until Nov. 30, when the verdicts for the remaining 11 will be given.
Younes Mohammed Mahmoud, Osama Mohammed Abdul-Ghani and Mohammed Jaez Sabbah are members of the Tawhid and Jihad group blamed for the attacks in Taba and Sharm el-Sheik.
The October 2004 bombings in the resorts of Taba and nearby Ras Shitan, killed 34 people, while the July 2005 attack in Sharm el-Sheik left 64 dead.
Some analysts said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network but Egyptian officials have dismissed involvement by the group, insisting they were the work of a domestic group known as Tawhid and Jihad.
Fears of al-Qaida activity in Egypt have grown since the terrorist network’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, said in an August videotape that a revived faction of the Egyptian militant group Gamaa Islamiya was joining al-Qaida. Gamaa Islamiya was the biggest militant group during a campaign of violence in Egypt in the 1990s that claimed hundreds of lives.