RIGHTS-EGYPT: Journalists Vow to Resist Prison Sentences

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yasser Talaat

CAIRO, Aug 30 1999 (IPS) - After months of waiting for law makers to honour electoral promises, Egyptian journalists have launched a campaign to cancel legal Law provisions that punish publication offenses with imprisonment. They vowed to resist jail sentences.

“It is time to get the imprisonment penalty off the Press law,” Ibrahim Nafie, editor in chief of the leading Al-Ahram daily and chairman of the Egyptian Press Union said after a Cairo criminal court sentenced three journalists to a two-year jail term for slandering a minister.

The ruling, announced last week, was interpreted as a warning to opposition journalists about lines not to be crossed.

A subcommittee on improving professional legislation, headed by Osama El–Ghazali Harb, chief editor of Al-Siyasa Al-Dawliy magazine, started working on a new press law this weekend.

“The subcommittee will hold a dialogue with journalists and then set up a committee of legal experts and veteran journalists to prepare a draft press law that does not include provisions such as the imprisonment of journalists for publication offenses,” said Yasser Rizk, a union council member.

He said imprisonment should be replaced by hefty fines, as other countries do.

Following decisions taken by the union’s council, a two-hour sit-in was organised on Saturday to protest against the provisions. In a statement afterwards, they announced solidarity actions with the arrested journalists.

Magdi Hussein, chief-editor of the pro-Islamic Al Shaab newspaper, reporter Salah Bedewi and cartoonist Essam Hanafi were given two year jail sentences and fined 6,000 US dollars each, the maximum penalties.

The court found the three guilty of libelling and slandering Minister of Agriculture Youssef Wali. For more than four months, Al-Shaab had launched a fierce campaign against Wali, who is also deputy prime minister and secretary-general of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

In many articles, main headlines and cartoons, AI-Shaab accused Wali of “treason” for building up strong ties with the Israeli agriculture industry and using his position to send hundreds of young men to Israel as part of his effort to normalise bilateral relations.

The newspaper also accused Wali of corruption, abuse of power and “destroying the national agriculture”.

Before handing himself over to the authorities, Magdi Hussein told reporters that he did not acknowledge the sentence.

He said he was not “scared of going to prison because of my political, nationalist and professional stands.” The sentences passed against him and his colleagues should serve as “a warning to all journalists of the fate awaiting them and the dangers they face,” he added.

The call to replace imprisonment provisions with fines is not new.

The programmes of all candidates in last June’s elections included calls for striking off legal provisions of imprisonment for publication offenses. All elected union council members have vowed to fight for this cause, especially after four journalists were imprisoned last year.

The current Press law is a softer version of a draft introduced in 1995, which provided for even tougher sentences. Following stiff opposition from the Press Union the draft law was repealed and another Bill was passed in 1996.

Libel is punishable by a maximum of one year imprisonment and-or a fine ranging between 300 and 1,500 dollars. If the target of the offence is a public official or if the issue is related to public duties, the maximum penalty is two years in jail and-or a fine ranging between 1,500 and 6,000 dollars.

The sentences given to the three Al-Shaab journalists – connected to the Islamic-oriented Labour Party – came as a reminder of the need for the cancellation of the imprisonment provisions.

On 24 February 1998, Magdi Hussein, and AI-Shaab’s cartoonist, Mo hamed Hilal, had been sentenced to one year in jail for slandering Alaa El–Alfi, son of former Interior Minister Hassan El-Alfi.

On 18 March 1998, Gamal Fahmi of the AI-Arabi daily, close to the Nasserist opposition party, received a six-month jail sentence after being convicted of slandering writer Tharwat Abaza.

On 28 May 1998, a three-month jail sentence was handed down against Amr Nassef, a member of the Nasserist Party and a journalist with AI- Osbou independent newspaper for publishing a “libellous” article in the Liberal newspaper Al–Ahrar , also against Abaza.

Their request for a stay of execution of the sentences until the Court of Appeals reached a decision was turned down, but after spending time in jail, the Court quashed all two sentences.

Hussein and Hilal had spent more than four months in prison when their release was ordered. Nassef had spent three months and Fahmi was released just three weeks before completing his term.

The opposition parties expressed “rejection (of) and grave concern” over the latest sentences against AI-Shaab journalists. They demanded the journalists’ immediate release and the cancellation of imprisonment penalties for publication offenses.

They stressed that AI-Shaab did not go beyond the limits of their right of criticism.

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) expressed concern for the rulings and, in a published statement, said that “although EOHR’s stance is to respect all judicial verdicts, it strongly condemns the use of imprisonment penalties against journalists in publication and opinion cases.”

The statement said that the “ruling draws attention to the need to review the legal framework governing the press in Egypt in order to cancel all freedom-restricting penalties in cases of opinion and publication.”

Prominent writer and managing editor of the pro-government AI Ahram newspaper, Salama Ahmed Salama, said that “as long as there are provisions in the law that allow for the im-prisonment of journalists for publication offenses, journalists will go to jail.”

“We must not forget this fact and only be reminded of it when a journalist is sentenced to prison. We cannot blame the judiciary for enforcing the law,” he said.

In an editorial, Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram’s board chairman and editor-in-chief said “The demand to cancel the imprisonment penalties for publication offenses tops the demands of Egyptian journalists.”

He said that imprisonment sentences had been dropped from all press laws in both developed and developing nations and replaced by fines.

Nafie said that a hefty fine could lead to the bankruptcy of the publication that violated the rights of society and the privacy of individuals.

Some countries have even established a special insurance system for the payment of fines imposed on journalists.

“Therefore, the demand has been valid and pressing for many years, and is not linked to the case of the imprisonment of the three colleagues because of the professional violations they committed against Youssef Wali,” Nafie said.