Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa

RIGHTS-EGYPT: Thousands Still Detained Following October Bombing

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 22 2005 (IPS) - If U.S. President George W. Bush wants Egypt to lead the Middle East toward democracy, he might first ask President Hosni Mubarak to stop the arbitrary detentions and torture of hundreds of dissidents and suspected Islamists.

According to a new report released in Cairo Tuesday by Human Rights Watch and two Egyptian rights groups, as many as 2,400 detainees rounded up after the Oct. 7, 2004 car bombing of the Taba Hilton Hotel located in the Egyptian-Israeli border continue to be held incommunicado, in violation of Egyptian law.

Many of them are believed to have been tortured in custody, according to the 48-page report, entitled "Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai".

"Egyptian security forces responded to the Arab atrocity by committing mass human rights abuses themselves," said Joe Stork, Washington director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, which investigated the detentions with the help of the Cairo-based Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and the Egyptian Association Against Torture.

"The Mubarak government still hasn’t gotten the message that routine torture and arbitrary arrests violate the law and fail to address real security needs," Stork declared, adding, "If Egypt won’t bring criminal charges against these detainees and give them fair trials, it must promptly release them."

The report’s release comes a day after Bush repeated his State of the Union Address appeal for Egypt to lead the region in democratisation, this time before an elite European audience gathered at Brussels’ Concert Noble.

Calling on the European Union (EU) to join Washington’s democracy campaign, Bush declared that "(t)he great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."

Mubarak, however, who hosted the first summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Palestine National Authority’s new president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the Sinai earlier this month, has shown little enthusiasm for the role set out for him by Bush.

Indeed, since late January, his security forces have arrested a number of prominent political activists in Egypt, including Ayman Nur, who opposed Mubarak’s apparent intention to run for an unprecedented fifth term in next fall’s elections as Egyptian president, a post he has held since the 1981 assassination of his precedessor, Anwar Sadat.

Nur, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and roughly arrested by state security officers on the steps of Egypt’s parliamentary building, had called for constitutional amendments to permit more than one candidate to run for the presidency. Under Egypt’s constitution, parliament nominates a single candidate and voters must check either "yes" or "no" on the ballot.

"The government raised hopes that Egypt was turning a new page on human rights when it permitted a public demonstration against President Mubarak in December," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director, earlier this month.

"But …the government’s radical crackdown on peaceful dissent sends the message that there’s no place for democratic freedoms under Mubarak."

While Nur and other prominent dissidents have not been held incommunicado, that does appear to be the fate of hundreds of less well-known suspected Islamists rounded up after the Taba hotel bombings, according to the latest report.

The car bombing, which killed more than 30, mostly Israeli, tourists and Egyptian hotel staff and wounded more than 100 others, was first thought to have been the work of al-Qaeda or other international groups.

But by October’s end, the Egyptian Interior Ministry identified nine people – two of whom had been killed and five under detention – as responsible for it and two smaller bombings in nearby tourist campsites that took place at the same time.

The announcement came nearly two weeks Egypt’s State Security Investigation service (SSI) launched mass arrests in and around al-‘Arish, the government and commercial centre of North Sinai. By December, Egyptian human rights groups had reported that as many as 3,000 people had been rounded up, including several hundred detained solely to secure the surrender of family members.

The government’s refusal to provide any information about those arrested has contributed to growing tensions in the region. On Jan. 28, between 500 and 1,000 demonstrators reportedly clashed with police in al-‘Arish when they tried to stage a protest against the detentions. Several days later, one of the missing suspects was killed in a series of shoot-outs with police in the area. On Feb. 5, the authorities released 90 detainees.

The latest report is based largely on a visit by HRW and the Egyptian groups to the region in early December during which they interviewed former detainees and eyewitnesses to the arrests in the al-‘Arish area. In each case, according to HRW, the SSI had detained suspects without informing them of the reasons, usually in pre-dawn raids on their homes.

The SSI typically kept detainees in their local offices for three or four days without charging them, then releasing a few and transferring the rest to prisons in Cairo and the Nile Delta.

"Most of those detained, it appeared, were or were considered to be Islamists," defined by HRW as persons favouring a system of governance that accords with what they consider to be core Islamic principles.

Family members said they had learned about their relatives’ whereabouts only through other detainees who had been released, as the government had declined to provide them with any information.

Several released detainees provided what HRW called "credible reports" that they and others were subjected to torture and ill-treatment during interrogation, while others said that had seen other detainees who had been badly tortured and heard the screams of those under torture.

Government officials contacted by HRW refused to meet with its delegation to discuss the situation and treatment of the detainees, and a subsequent letter of inquiry to Egyptian Interior Minister Habib el-Adli has also not been answered.

HRW noted that Cairo’s counter-terrorism policies rely on special powers conferred by the Emergency Law of 1958 which has been continuously in effect since 1981 and is renewed every three years, as well as the 1992 Law to Combat Terrorism.

These provisions give the government the power to arbitrarily arrest and detain people for indefinite periods, although the Emergency Law also requires that detainees be immediately informed of the reasons for their arrest and permitted to contact his family and legal counsel and to appeal for his release after 30 days.