Judicial harassment of Hossam Bahgat

On 20 June 2019, the Cairo Criminal Court postponed the review of a request to cancel the travel bans imposed on human rights defenders Mozn Hassan, Hossam Bahgat, Mohamed Zaree and Gamal Eid until 14 September 2019.
 

On 20 April 2016, an investigating judge ordered to expand the asset freezing case list to prominent Egyptian human rights defender Mr Bahey Eldin Hassan, his wife and daughter, two staff members of Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), human rights defenders Mr Mostafa Al Hassan and Mr Abdel Hafez Tayel. This development is related to the foreign funding case which recently reopened in Egypt. On the same day, the Cairo Criminal Court in Zeinhom postponed the asset freeze hearing of Mr Hossam Bahgat, Mr Gamal Eid and other human rights defenders, charged for “using foreign funding to foment unrest”. This is following a request to freeze their personal funds and family assets. If charged, the human rights defenders could each face up to twenty-five years imprisonment under the Egyptian penal code.

Bahey Eldin Hassan is the director and founder of the CIHRS, a Cairo-based, independent, regional non-governmental organization founded in 1993 working on the promotion and respect for the principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the Arab region. CIHRS received the French Republic's Human Rights Prize in 2007. Mostafa Al Hassan is an Egyptian lawyer and the director of the leading independent human rights organisation Hisham Mubarak Law Centre dedicated to the promotion of human rights through litigation, campaigns and legal research. Abdel Hafez Tayel is head of the Egyptian Center for Right to Education, an organisation aimed at promoting and ensuring human rights education in Egypt.

Forty-one Egyptian organisations have been included in the foreign funding case, also known as Case No. 173, with some of their leaders and staff members being summoned on charges including “receipt of illegal foreign funding” and “working without legal permission”. In March 2016, four human rights defenders and their families were informed that an order had been made for the freezing of their money and properties. These include Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and currently a journalist at the independent news service Mada Masr, reporting extensively on army and military trials in Egypt, and Gamal Eid, founder and director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). Two staff members of CIHRS and three staff members from Nazra for Feminist Studies were also summoned to appear for questioning. The trial has been postponed by the Cairo Criminal Court in Zeinhom until 23 May 2016, pending further investigation.

Front Line Defenders condemns the criminalisation of civil society in Egypt and calls for an immediate end to the persecution of human rights defenders, reiterating the essential role of their work in the development of just and equal society.

Front Line Defenders urges the authorities in Egypt to:

1. Put an end to the ongoing investigation against the above-mentioned human rights defenders and human rights organisations in Egypt, and drop all charges and measures, including the asset freezes, against them and their families;

2. Immediately cease all forms of harassment of human rights organisations and human rights defenders in Egypt, as Front Line Defenders believes that their rights are being restricted solely as a result of their legitimate and peaceful work in the defence of human rights;

3. Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Egypt are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions.

Human rights defender Hossam Bahgat published a statement on his Facebook page documenting his three-day detention by military intelligence and interrogation by military prosecution.

On Monday, 9 November 2015, the Military Prosecution ordered the detention of the human rights defender. He was detained at the headquarters of the Military Intelligence for four days, pending investigation on charges of “publishing false news that harms national interests” and “disseminating information that disturbs public peace” for publishing reports about Egypt's military.

Bahgat is a journalist and prominent human rights defender in Egypt. His investigative stories appear in the independent news service Mada Masr. From 2002 to 2013, he was the founding executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights where he still serves as chairman.

The English translation of Bahgat's Facebook post reads:

Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has expressed any form of solidarity during the three days in which I was “hosted” by the Egyptian military.

It is not the appropriate moment for me to narrate all the details of the past three days, so I will only document the events that took place briefly.

On the morning of Sunday November 8, I headed to military intelligence headquarters in response to a written summons that was delivered to my house three days earlier.

I spent approximately three hours at military intelligence before I was escorted through a back door to a car and driven to the military judiciary, accompanied by armed guards. My request to contact my family, lawyer or colleagues, who were waiting for me outside the building, was denied.

At the military judiciary, I was held in the car with armed guards for over five hours, before being made to appear in front of a member of the North Cairo Military Prosecution and interrogated as someone facing charges.

I resisted several attempts to intimidate and entice me into waiving my right to have a lawyer present. Upon my insistence, I was allowed one phone call to inform a friend of my whereabouts and request a lawyer.

As my interrogation began, a large number of colleagues, friends and lawyers, who are the companions of years of struggle, waited for me outside with the knowledge of the colonel who heads the prosecution.

The interrogation, which commenced in the presence of 25 volunteer defense lawyers, was wholly focused on a journalistic investigation that I published in Mada Masr on October 13 with the headline “A coup busted?”

My interrogation was based on a report by military intelligence against me. At the end, the head of the prosecution informed me that I faced charges of deliberately broadcasting false news that harms national interests and involuntarily disseminating information that harms public interests, as per Articles 102 and 188 of the Penal Code.

After the interrogation was completed and the lawyers were dismissed, I was transferred to military intelligence again. I waited in the same car until 11 pm, when another car arrived with three armed men in civilian clothing. They searched me thoroughly, then took me to their car, blindfolded me and asked me to lower my head on the seat in front of me.

I was taken to a room, which was secured by both a wooden and metal door, from Sunday November 8 at midnight until Tuesday November 9 at noon. During this time, I was not interrogated.

All of the demands I made to the guards were ignored. I requested many times that they inform officials of my wishes to know the military prosecution’s decision regarding my detention and to understand my legal position — to know whether I was being detained under investigation, referred to trial or abducted. I was not even allowed to meet any of the officers.

Today, on Tuesday, at noon, I was blindfolded and escorted by an armed guard in a car to military intelligence again. I met with two officers, a general and a lieutenant colonel, for an hour, and was informed for the first time that the prosecution had ordered my detention for four days pending investigations, but that military intelligence had decided to release me today.

At the end of the meeting, I wrote a statement that was dictated to me stating: “I will abide by legal and security procedures when publishing material pertaining to the Armed Forces” and asserting that I did not experience any physical or emotional abuse during my detention at military intelligence. My possessions were returned to me and I was allowed to leave.

I still do not know the fate of the investigations into the two charges mentioned above. Defense lawyers will try to clarify the matter in the coming days.

Throughout the course of my interrogation by military prosecution, they reiterated that I do not enjoy the legal and syndicate protection that journalists have, because I am not a member of the Journalists Syndicate. While I thank the syndicate for sending a lawyer to attend my interrogation, I urge, again, the board of the Journalists Syndicate and its general assembly to take immediate measures to secure syndicate protection to all those who practice journalism with no discrimination.

In the end, I was lucky to receive an outpouring of solidarity and sympathy, which guaranteed a degree of relatively better treatment during my detention and the short duration of my stay, despite the aforementioned procedural violations of my rights as a detainee. I can only thank all the lawyers, colleagues, friends, comrades and Egyptian and international organizations that expressed their support and offered me their assistance.

I wish for freedom for the thousands of people unfairly detained in Egyptian prisons. I reassert my rejection of the criminalization of journalistic work, the use of the Penal Code to imprison journalists, and the trial of civilians in military courts.

Hossam Bahgat
November 10, 2015 — 6 pm.

The Military Prosecution ordered today the detention of prominent journalist and human rights defender Mr Hossam Bahgat.

The human rights defender is now detained at the headquarters of the Military Intelligence for four days, pending investigation on charges of “publishing false news that harms national interests” and “disseminating information that disturbs public peace” for publishing reports about Egypt's military.

Hossam Bahgat received a summons from Military Intelligence at his home in Alexandria on Thursday, November 5th. He arrived at the Military Intelligence headquarters in Nasr City in Cairo at 9 am on Sunday, November 7th. He was not allowed to enter with his phone, or be accompanied by a lawyer. After several hours, Hossam Bahgat was transferred to Military Prosecution which interrogated him into the night in the presence of his lawyers and ordered his overnight detention at the headquarters of the Military Intelligence until it delivers its final decision on his case.