More harsh prison sentences for Egyptian students and opposition figures

The Egyptian courts have continued to issue harsh rulings against political prisoners in a new wave of confrontation between those opposed to the 2013 coup and the judiciary. On Wednesday, two courts issued prison sentences totalling 2,000 years to dozens of students and political prisoners accused of criminal activity.

Since the military coup against the democratic president in July 2013, hundreds of students have been tried and sentenced to prison for up to 17 years each simply for participating in campus protests against the government. Others had called for the release of their already imprisoned colleagues.

This week the Giza Criminal Court sentenced 71 political opponents to life imprisonment and sent two minors for 10 years in prison. All were charged with an arson attack on Kerdasa Church on 14 August, 2013. That was the day that the authorities dispersed the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya protest, killing thousands of people in the process. The defendants were accused of affiliation with an illegal group, attempted murder, possession of firearms, burning a religious facility, terrorising the public, stalling traffic and resisting the authorities.

The Cairo Criminal Court also issued its ruling on Wednesday in the case of clashes at Al-Azhar University in December 2013. It sentenced 63 students opposed to the coup, including 11 women, to prison sentences ranging from one to seven years, as well as forcing them to pay approximately $340,000 in fines for engaging in violent protests, showing force, damaging public and private property, threatening civil servants, assaulting police officers and the obstruction of public interests. Thirteen of the defendants were acquitted, including a photojournalist.

Many lawyers and human rights activists say that the Egyptian judiciary is using bail money and fines as crippling weapons against defendants opposed to the coup, or as a means to exhaust them financially. Arabi21 has witnessed many cases in which defendants are unable to pay the bail imposed on them by the prosecution and court for their release. This has driven them to ask their friends and acquaintances to contribute to their bail, which can amount to thousands of dollars.

According to a report published by Egyptian Observatory for Rights and Freedoms (EORF) last week, the total amount of bail and fines imposed on political prisoners totalled more than $25 million from July 2013, when the coup began, until March this year. While the courts are imposing large fines and bail sums on the political opposition, they are reducing the fines imposed previously on members of the Mubarak regime, as was the case with former senior member of the now dissolved National Democratic Party of Egypt (NDP) and businessman Ahmed Ezz. In November 2014, the Court of Cassation reduced the fine imposed on Ezz on charges of holding a steel monopoly from approximately $13 million to $1.3 million, despite the fact that he is a multi-millionaire.

In this context, human rights activist Mona Seif claimed, “The bail imposed by the prosecution and courts on defendants is actually nothing more than protection money collected by the state from the defendants and their families.”

According to Nadir Ferjani, a professor of politics at Cairo University, “The current military government in Egypt is using the army and police to exercise force against the opposition and restrict the freedoms of the people by means of violence. Meanwhile, it is using the judiciary to practice brutality against society using the force of unjust laws.” He added in a Facebook post that the government is awarding the judiciary and raising its social status in order to guarantee its loyalty.

A defence lawyer for political prisoners who preferred to remain anonymous told Arabi21, “The situation has turned into a case of exploiting defendants. This is evidenced by the fact that the prosecution or courts are imposing bail sums on wealthy defendants based on their ability to pay them.” This, he added, confirms that there is coordination between the police and judges, including the provision of information regarding the financial status of each defendant.

Those following the situation have said that these large amounts of money taken from the pockets of prisoners have become a source of income for the current government, as the money thus collected is deposited in the Ministry of Justice treasury and used to pay for health and social services for the judges and their families.

In many cases, defendants have been released after paying a large bail sum, only to be rearrested by the police a few weeks later.