The strike at the privately-owned Abul Makarem Textile factory (the second industrial action in a month) ended on Wednesday, in the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya, after police detained 20 strikers, reports Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Tag: detainees
Prosecutor extends blogger detention for 15 days
The Tagammu el-Khames Prosecutor extended the detention of Abdel Moneim Mahmoud and 18 Muslim Brothers detainees by another 15 days. No more details available yet on whether the detainees have started a hunger strike as they were threatening today or not.
And on another front:
CAIRO, May 8 (Reuters) – An Egyptian court has ruled that a decision by President Hosni Mubarak to transfer 40 Muslim Brotherhood detainees to military courts was illegal, security sources said on Tuesday.
A lawyer for the detainees said the ruling effectively required their release, but said there was no guarantee the government would implement it.
“The court has, thank God, accepted the appeal and decided to stop the President’s decision … as such, that entails their release,” said lawyer Abdel Moniem Abdel Maqsoud.
“Will the government carry out the ruling, or will it as usual procrastinate? That’s the question that everyone’s waiting to have answered,” he said.
Such a ruling, while not unprecedented, is exceptionally rare as it is effectively a challenge to the president, who ordered the transfers.
Legally, the ruling is binding and effective immediately.
But the government often ignores court release orders in cases involving opponents.
In its ruling the administrative court said that the Egyptian constitution and international law required that individuals be tried before their “natural” judge — civilian courts in this case.
It also said the law recognized no “absolute authority”, a reference to Mubarak.
Mubarak referred 40 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including third-in-command Khairat el-Shatir, to military court on terrorism and money-laundering charges in February, the first such referrals since 2001.
The detained Islamists appeared before a closed military tribunal in late April, but the session was postponed after only a single defence lawyer turned up.
The Egyptian government has stepped up a crackdown on the Brotherhood since the group’s strong showing in 2005 elections gave it around a fifth of seats in parliament. It has targeted Brotherhood finances and detained or arrested hundreds.
A set of constitutional amendments approved in a referendum in March gave Mubarak broad powers to transfer anyone suspected of “terrorism” to military courts, known for tough and swift verdicts. But the order transferring the detainees to military courts was made before the constitution was changed.
Moneim and MB detainees to start hunger-strike tomorrow
Blogojournalist Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, and the 18 detained MB students are to start an open-ended hunger-strike tomorrow Tuesday, if the Prosecutor extends their detention, after being subject to humiliating treatment in Mahkoum Tora Prison.
In a statement sent out of prison, the detainees complained from:
1-Confinement for 23 hours a day in overcrowded cells where an average of 22 inmates are kept in 10×22 feet cells infested with bugs with only one extremely filthy bathroom to share.
2-Numerous assaults by criminal prisoners and thugs, including sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
3-Use of illegal drugs inside prison cells by criminals and drug dealers, and the produced smoke which makes it very difficult to even breath an already polluted air, in addition to extremely foul language and screaming all night by intoxicated thugs which became a source of psychological agony.
4-Poor medical care in handling life threatening and contagious medical conditions, including skin diseases and HIV. Four cases of chicken pox and measles were denied appropriate care and hospital admission.
The statement also complained that the students who were mostly preparing for their final exams, surrendered their school books to the prison administration in protest, since it became impossible for them to study in such awful environment.
Moneim is to be interrogated by the Prosecutor tomorrow, at the Tagammu el-Khames Prosecution’s Office, Nasr City. Please express your solidarity by showing up tomorrow 10am in front of the office.
If you can’t show up, it’d be still great to at least write one follow up posting on his case, and circulate information among your contacts and friends, inside Egypt and abroad, about the abuses against Moneim and the Egyptian political detainees languishing in Mubarak’s gulag.