[This is a collection of news updates on Egypt compiled from multiple sources by the editors.]
Mubarak May Be Out By Week’s End
An Egyptian court ordered the release of ousted President Hosni Mubarak as his lawyer told reporters that he may be out of prison by the end of the week.
The court gave the prosecution forty-eight hours to appeal the release order, but a judicial source at the general prosecutor’s office told Mada Masr that they may decide not to appeal, which means Mubarak could be out by Thursday after some procedural paperwork.
Earlier on Wednesday, a North Cairo misdemeanor appeals court accepted a petition for Mubarak’s release in a corruption case in which he stands accused of illegally receiving gifts worth millions of pounds on an annual basis from Al-Ahram state media institution, state news agency MENA reported.
This case was the last remaining legal grounds for his temporary detention, after courts ordered his release in three other cases, MENA reported.
The ousted president is being retried on charges of ordering the killing of protesters during the eighteen-day popular uprising in 2011 that led to his removal by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Since he has served the maximum amount of pre-trial detention permitted in this case, he can wait the retrial proceedings out of prison.
Last year, he was sentenced to life in prison for failing to prevent the killing of more than eight hundred protesters, and later a court accepted his appeal for retrial. He was being held at the Tora Prison hospital due to his medical condition.
The next hearing in the case regarding the killing of protesters is set for 25 August.
Judges from the court had headed to Tora Prison early in the day to review the petition for Mubarak’s release two days after North Cairo criminal court’s decision ordering Mubarak’s release while keeping his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, in detention on corruption charges in the presidential palace case.
Ahmed Ezzat, a lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Though and Expression, explained that Mubarak had completed the maximum duration of temporary detention in all cases, which is two years for the killing protesters case, six months for the corruption charges and three months for the Al-Ahram gifts case.
Ezzat said that the most important of these cases is the killing of protesters, for which the proceedings have been lagging recently and the general prosecution, Ezzat says, has long been reluctant to submit evidence that incriminates Mubarak.
He is concerned that due to the current political developments, political factions currently being demonized, including the Muslim Brotherhood, may end up being wrongly incriminated in these politicized cases.
Mohamed Morsi, who came to power as the first elected civilian president after Mubarak’s ouster, was deposed by the army as mass protests demanded he step down after one year in office.
He is currently being detained pending investigation into charges of espionage, killing of protesters during the 2012 presidential palace protests, as well as the opening of the Wadi al-Natrun prison during the 2011 uprising.
Yasser al-Hawary, official spokesperson of the Free Egyptians Party, is unsurprised by the release order since Mubarak should have been tried in a political case, and not on charges of illegally owning property and receiving gifts from Al-Ahram, since these insignificant cases are mired in legal loopholes, he said.
“None of the governments that have been in place since Mubarak’s trial have done anything to implement transitional justice laws and measures,” he said. “In the killing of protesters case, all the evidence is in general intelligence and state security so it will not be submitted.”
The Coalition of National Revolutionary Forces said this was a catastrophe for the January 25 revolution, adding that Mubarak should have been tried on charges related to decades of political corruption.
[This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.]
Muslim Preacher Arrested Near Libyan Border
Safwat Hegazy joined the list of detained Islamist leaders, as security informed local media of his arrest in the early hours of Wednesday in Siwa, close to the Libyan border.
Hegazy is facing charges of inciting violence and attempted murder, alongside a number of other Brotherhood leaders. According to a security source quoted by the privately-owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, Hegazy was arrested in Siwa with a lawyer, in what appears to have been just days before an attempted escape to Libya.
Hegazy’s arrest has been falsely reported a number of times previously, but this time different security sources confirmed the arrest, including Vice Interior Minister Abdel Fattah Othman who informed state television of some details of the operation.
Hegazy, a preacher close to the Muslim Brotherhood, has no clear organizational ties with them. When he considered taking part in the 2012 presidential elections, he was supported by the hardline Jama’a al-Islamiya. However, he retreated from the contest. He was a staunch supporter of Morsi’s presidency and is known for fiery public statements particularly against Christians.
In the late hours of Monday, security also arrested Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie in an apartment in Nasr City, close to the Rabea al-Adaweya sit-in that was dispersed by the police and the army on 14 August.
Brotherhood leaders Essam al-Erian and Mohamed al-Beltagy remain out of security’s reach, although several security sources on Tuesday spread news that their whereabouts have been identified and that their arrests are imminent.
[This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.]
Rights Groups Criticize Detention of Syrians and Palestinians in Egypt
Egyptian rights groups have condemned the continuing detention of Syrians nationals in Egypt, who have been placed into custody despite having valid visas.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the twelve signatory NGOs say that a group of Syrian and Palestinian families were arrested while attempting to travel out of Egypt. They had fallen victim to a man who had promised them that he could help them reach Italy for four thousand US dollars each.
There are thirty-four children amongst the detainees, one of whom has Down Syndrome. In addition, the children and several other detainees are suffering from skin diseases due to lack of hygiene in what the NGOs describe as the inhumane conditions in which they are being held.
Brought before the public prosecutor, the group was accused of attempted illegal immigration out of the country. The public prosecutor ordered that the detainees be released and sent to the Interior Ministry’s Passports and Immigration Department. In coordination with state security investigations, the Passports and Immigration Department ordered that the detainees be released either to Lebanon, Syria, Turkey or Malaysia, with the Palestinians being sent either to Rafah or Malaysia.
[This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.]
New Details Emerge About Death of Brotherhood Detainees
The privately-owned Al-Watan newspaper has published what it alleges are new details surrounding the death of thirty-six Morsi supporters in a prison van on Sunday.
According to an unnamed police major who was tasked with transporting 612 detainees to the Abu Zaabal prison, the men were held in poorly ventilated, overcrowded prison trucks for three hours before their deaths.
The police officer and others involved in transporting the men had demanded of Interior Ministry superiors that the men be moved during the curfew for security reasons, a request that was refused.
The detainees were moved in five prison trucks at seven am on Sunday. They reached the prison at 8.30 am, where the prison director refused to allow the vans to enter because there was no room for the detainees. This situation continued until eleven am leading detainees held in the trucks to protest.
When a policeman opened the door of the truck, he was taken hostage by the detainees. A special operations officer responded by spraying “a substance used in self-defense inside the van” and was able to rescue the hostage.
Teargas was then sprayed inside the trucks. The officer says that firearms were not used to quell the detainees and that they all died as a result of suffocation.
In addition to conflicting reports from the government and supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the detainees, the official account itself remains unclear.
[This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.]
Escalating Tensions Around US Aid
The growing tension between Egypt and the United States has reached new levels in recent days.
The office of Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democrat head of the appropriations state and foreign operations subcommittee told American news outlet The Daily Beast on Monday that military aid to Egypt had been temporarily cut off.
The White House denied yesterday having cut off the aid, clarifying that the aid was under review but had not been stopped.
Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi declared on Tuesday that Egypt would survive any cuts in military aid, adding that Egypt had successfully resorted to other arm providers in the past, such as Russia.
The US yearly military aid package to Egypt is related to the 1979 Camp David treaty. The American Congress sets the size, allocation and conditions attached to the military aid each year.
Providing aid to a country where the government is a result of a military coup is forbidden by American law but it is up to the White House to determine whether the events in Egypt constitute a coup or not.
Since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi on 3 July, both the Democrat and Republican parties are deeply divided on the stance to adopt with regard to Egypt.
President Obama has cancelled joint military exercises and delayed the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt but has so far refrained from publically denouncing Morsi’s removal as a coup.
The ambivalence of the US position with regard to Morsi’s ouster has stirred anger in Egypt. Torn between the desire not to antagonize an historical ally and internal pressure to more strongly condemn repeated human rights violations, the White House has somewhat softened its stance.
It appears that the US presidency has decided to keep its options open and await further developments before adopting a more definitive stance. 585 million US dollars is due to be delivered to the Egyptian military by the end of the American fiscal year on 30 September.
The White House spokesperson John Earnest declared yesterday that there was nothing abnormal in the halting of the aid. “Assistance is provided in tranches”, he said. But he further added that human rights violations did not make the transfer more likely, referring to the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie.
It is likely that this veiled threat provoked the strong reaction from Prime Minister Beblawi.
The end of the military alliance between the United States and Egypt would be a major upset to American hegemony and the role of Israel in the region.
[This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.]