CAF Letter Calling for an Independent Investigation into the Death of Researcher Ayman Hadhoud

CAF Letter Calling for an Independent Investigation into the Death of Researcher Ayman Hadhoud

CAF Letter Calling for an Independent Investigation into the Death of Researcher Ayman Hadhoud

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Middle East Studies Association on 20 April 2022 in response to the death of Ayman Hadhoud in Egyptian custody.]

His Excellency Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
President, Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: +20-2-390-1998 

Chancellor Hamada El-Sawy
Office of the Public Prosecutor
Fax: +20-2-25774716

Prime Solicitor-General Khaled Diauddin
Supreme State Security Prosecution in the Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: +20-2-26381956

Dear President al-Sisi, Chancellor El-Sawy and Prime Solicitor-General Diauddin,

We write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) to express, in the strongest terms possible, our outrage regarding the death of Ayman Hadhoud, an economic researcher, who died in the custody of Egyptian authorities after his forced disappearance in February.  This case appears to be part of a continuing, disturbing pattern in Egypt of repression of scholars and researchers through arrests, politically motivated prosecution, inhumane detention conditions, and violence.  

MESA was founded in 1966 to support scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has almost 2800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.  

A graduate of the American University in Cairo with a BA and an MA in Business Administration, Mr. Hadhoud was a researcher, whose writings and analyses on economic affairs have informed a variety of research and public policy communities, and who also served as an economic advisor to the Reform and Development Party. He was forcibly disappeared in early February, when his family lost contact with him. Shortly thereafter, the family was told by a police contact that he was being detained at Al-Amiriyya Police Station (northwest of the Cairo governorate). The family made various requests to authorities to visit Mr. Hadhoud, but all their requests were denied. They eventually learned that he had been transferred to Abbasiyya Psychiatric Hospital, where he was reportedly being held for evaluation, but hospital personnel denied them access to visit Mr. Hadhoud. On one occasion, an official informed the family that they needed to obtain a permit from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, since Mr. Hadhoud was allegedly being held in conjunction with a criminal case. On another occasion, the same official denied that Mr. Hadhoud was even at the hospital. 

On 4 April 2022, the family was told by a hospital contact that Mr. Hadhoud had in fact died in early March.  Only on 9 April did the family receive the first official communication about his death.  Since that date, the authorities have failed to produce a credible report either of the circumstances under which Mr. Hadhoud was arrested and detained or of the reasons for his death.  Official accounts have been incomplete and at times contradictory, and do not provide the public or Mr. Hadhoud’s loved ones with answers to important questions.  These questions include (but are not limited to):
 

  1. Why were Mr. Hadhoud’s family members not informed of his death until more than a month after his passing?
  2. Why did the authorities deny knowledge of Mr. Hadhoud’s whereabouts at various points between his forced disappearance and his death if he was in fact being held in conjunction with an ongoing investigation?  
  3. Why was he denied visitation and access to legal counsel during his detention?
  4. What are the circumstances surrounding his death? 
  5. Is there an ongoing investigation into suspected wrongdoing on the part of police and hospital officials responsible for Mr. Hadhoud’s well-being during his detention?
  6. Why did the Public Prosecution issue a statement on April 11 denying that Mr. Hadhoud’s body manifested evidence of foul play in relation to his death although the deceased’s brother reportedseeing signs of a fractured skull and bruising on the body?

 

The lack of transparency surrounding these (and many other) issues, coupled with the contradictory official reports regarding Mr. Hadhoud’s arrest and death, raise serious concerns about a possible coverup of wrongdoing.   

We therefore call upon you to open an independent investigation into Mr. Hadhoud’s case, to provide Mr. Hadhoud’s family with the answers they seek, and to hold responsible any and all parties who may be liable for his death or any other wrongdoing in the handling of his case. 

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Eve Troutt Powell
MESA President
Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

cc:

Dr. Hanafi Gebali, Speaker, Egyptian Parliament

Motaz Zahran, Ambassador, Embassy of Egypt, Washington, D.C.

Mohamed Fathi Ahmed Edrees, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the UN

Amb. Moushira Khattab, President, National Council for Human Rights, Cairo, Egypt

Mohamad Anwar El-Sadat, President, Reform and Development Party, Egypt 

The Honorable Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Honorable Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders

Maria Arena, Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Viktor Almqvist, Press Officer for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament

Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Kati Piri, Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs, European Parliament

Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

Yael Lempert, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State, United States Government

Philip McDaniel, Foreign Policy Advisor: Congressman Tom Malinowski (NJ-7), Member of Egypt Human Rights Caucus

Nancy Chen, Legislative Fellow: Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), Member of Egypt Human Rights Caucus

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412