In two days, thousands of the Sinai Bedouins are scheduled to start an open-ended sit-in on the Egyptian-Palestinian borders, protesting police torture, mass detentions and random killings, demanding State Security police troops evacuate from the peninsula and the release of those detained without trial.
[Above: Sinai Bedouins intifada against police brutality. Photo by Amr Abdallah, April 2007.]
An alliance of 13 Sinai Bedouin tribes issued a statement denouncing police brutality, and threatening to stage a new protest at the borders with Palestine on 1 July if their demands are not met.
Here’s an English translation of their statement:
“We the sons of the Sinai tribes do not accept appease against our patriotism from anyone, no matter how high his position is. We are Egyptian patriots, and the Military Intelligence records prove that. However, unfortunately, we have to say with bitterness that we are treated by the security services in an inhuman way.
This includes random arrests, as there are thousands of detainees from Sinai’s sons, without trial, leaving behind families with no breadwinners. There are also fugitives sentenced in absentia on fabricated charges.
We the sons of Sinai are humiliated inside police stations, on borders crossings and checkpoints of which Sinai is full.
We are not demanding the impossible. Our demands are legitimate, as those of any other Egyptian citizen’s, including:
1- Releasing the detainees found innocent by the court
2- Revoking the sentences given by military and civilian courts in absentia on fabricated charges
3-Halting the random shootings by the security services
4- Eliminating the tyranny and control of the security services
5- Re-scheduling the northern Sinai citizens’ debts owed to the Development Bank
6- Prosecuting the (police) officers who committed crimes, in front of a fair court
7- Halting the (police) violations against the privacy of our homes and the taking of innocent women, sheiks and children as hostages
8-Discussing the issue of the land of the camp in Rafah city
9-Providing job opportunities to the sons of the tribes
If our demands are not met, we will be forced to renew our open-ended sit-in on 1 July 2007.
HRW joins the calls to halt the execution of three of the alleged Taba bombers, who were tried in one of Hosni’s kangaroo courts last year:
Egypt should not execute three men sentenced to death by a State Security Court for the 2004 bombings in Taba, Human Rights Watch said today. In a letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Human Rights Watch said that because of serious trial irregularities, including allegations of torture, coerced confessions, and prolonged incommunicado detention, the accused should be tried again before a court whose proceedings comply with international fair trial standards.
“If the government thinks these men are to blame for the outrages in Taba, it should prosecute them in a fair trial,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Executing these men after such deeply flawed trials would be a travesty of justice.”
On November 30, 2006 a State Security Emergency Court in Isma`iliyya sentenced Yunis Muhammad Mahmud `Alyan, Usama Muhammad `Abd al-Ghani al-Nakhlawi, and Muhammad Jayiz Sabbah Hussein to death after convicting them in connection with the October 7, 2004 bombings in and around the resort city of Taba. This court, established under Egypt’s Emergency Law, does not provide the right of appeal. Only the President of the Republic can order a retrial or alter the sentences. Human Rights Watch said it had information that legal advisers in Mubarak’s office recently recommended that he ratify the death sentences against these men.