Rights Groups Denounce Nour's Forgery Conviction as Politically Motivated
By Nagwa Hasaan and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 25, 2005
CAIRO, Dec. 24 -- An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced Ayman Nour, the lawyer and politician who challenged President Hosni Mubarak at the polls, to five years in prison on charges of forging petitions. Supporters and human rights groups denounced the conviction as an outrage.
When Judge Abdel Salam Gomaa read the verdict, Nour's wife, Gamila Ismael, led chants of "God is great" and "Down with Hosni Mubarak." Nour, 41, wearing white prison overalls, joined in before he was led from the courtroom cage in which he had been held.
His attorney, Amir Salem, said the verdict would be appealed. "This will go into the dustbin of history," Salem shouted. "This is a political trial to destroy Ayman Nour."
In his written verdict, Gomaa said, "The court does not accept Ayman Nour's defense that the documents were forged by certain parties without his knowledge and with the aim of harming him."
The prosecution of Nour attracted the attention of the Bush administration, which recently demanded that the trial meet "international standards." President Bush has prodded Egypt, a staunch U.S. ally and the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, to "show the way" to democracy for Arab states in the Middle East. Bush has publicly praised democracy activists such as Nour, who met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last summer.
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the United States was "deeply troubled" by the verdict.
"The United States calls upon the Egyptian government to act under the laws of Egypt in the spirit of its professed desire for increased political openness and dialogue within Egyptian society, and out of humanitarian concern, to release Mr. Nour from detention," McClellan said.
Fady Qady, an official with Human Rights Watch, said, "The sentence proves what we had previously stated, which is that the trial was politicized. The Egyptian government is incapable of accepting the opinion of the other. The trial was not fair. It was conducted on a political, not a procedural, basis."
The verdict climaxed several months of ups and downs in the democratic opposition's battle with Mubarak, who has been in power a quarter-century.
Nour was charged with forging documents required to legally register his Tomorrow Party. In October 2004, the government-controlled party oversight commission approved his petitions without objection. A few months later, however, prosecutors charged Nour with falsifying scores of papers. He spent six weeks in jail and was released under U.S. pressure.
In September, Nour ran against Mubarak in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential election. Mubarak won more than 80 percent of the vote in a race characterized by low turnout and open campaigning for Mubarak by his National Democratic Party inside polling stations. Nour finished second with about 7 percent of the vote.
In last month's parliamentary elections, Nour lost his seat to a ruling-party candidate. He received threatening phone calls, and municipal inspectors began visiting his house regularly to lodge complaints about renovation work.
His party split, and Nour accused the defectors of being government stooges. Finally, on Dec. 5, Gomaa ordered Nour back to jail. Egyptian commentators predicted he would be found guilty; in 2002, Gomaa convicted the human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim of defaming Egypt, though the verdict was later overturned.
On Saturday, Ibrahim said of Nour's conviction: "It is a sad day for Egypt and for reform. The Mubarak regime could not stand him, so they fabricated a case against him, reminiscent of my own case."
While he was in jail, Nour went on a hunger strike and was hospitalized. In court on Saturday, he looked pale. Before his supporters entered, almost all the seats in court were occupied by men in dark suits, one of whom said he had come to "see justice served." Outside, riot police holding bamboo rods and rubber truncheons hemmed in about 200 demonstrators who had gathered the night before and were reciting Koranic verses.
When word of the verdict spread, some of the protesters wept, while some men threw stones at the police. An old woman in a veil shouted, "He's innocent!"
Ismael, Nour's wife, emerged from the courthouse, jumped on the back of a pickup truck and called out: "Down with Hosni Mubarak! Long live Egypt! God is greater than any oppressor."
One of Nour's attorneys, Ihab Kholy, told the crowd: "We will not retreat. Hand in hand, we will build tomorrow."
Protesters responded, "Ayman Nour, symbol of freedom against a government of thugs."
The crowd then marched through Cairo's Nasser City district. Police marched behind them. When the crowd neared Heliopolis, site of Mubarak's presidential palace, the police blocked the route. The protesters sang Egypt's national anthem and dispersed.
Such scenes of defiance were unimaginable 18 months ago, when Egypt's democracy movement crept onto the streets of Cairo and small anti-Mubarak demonstrations became weekly events. Nour's contribution was to take advantage of Mubarak's move to open up the presidential election and act as if he had a chance to win. He barnstormed the countryside, even though ruling-party toughs would occasionally stone his entourage or hamper its movements.
Nour's imprisonment has the effect of narrowing opposition candidates' already minuscule chances of running in presidential elections -- either six years from now, if they are held on schedule, or earlier, if Mubarak resigns or dies. Under complex rules set by Mubarak, only parties that hold at least 6 percent of the seats in parliament can field a candidate. Nour's party won only one seat in the recent elections, and other opposition parties also fared badly.
The Muslim Brotherhood surpassed the 6 percent threshold, but its winning candidates ran as independents because the Brotherhood is outlawed and not a recognized political party. Independents can run only if they are approved by councils dominated by Mubarak's party.
Williams reported from Rome.
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