\u201cBashar should abandon power and retire safely in Egypt. The general-prosecutor is murder-friendly,\u201d a friend, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told me as we watched former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak\u2019s trial in the Police Academy\u2019s criminal court. Although Mubarak and his interior (security) minister, Habib al-Adly, were handed life sentences at the conclusion of their trials, the generals who ran Egypt\u2019s apparatus of repression as deputy interior ministers were acquitted.<\/p>\n
Hasan Abd al-Rahman, head of the notorious, Stasi-like State Security Investigations (SSI); Ahmad Ramzi, head of the Central Security Forces (CSF); Adly Fayyid, the head of Public Security; Ismail al-Shaer, who led the Cairo Security Directorate (CSD); Osama Youssef, the head of the Giza Security Directorate; and Omar Faramawy, who oversaw of the 6th of October Security Directorate, were all cleared of any wrongdoing. Lawyers for Mubarak and al-Adly will appeal their life-sentences, and many Egyptians believe that they will receive lighter sentences.<\/p>\n
The verdicts sent an unmistakable message, one with serious consequences for Egypt\u2019s political transition. A spontaneous cry was heard from the lawyers and the families of victims when they were announced: \u201cThe people want to cleanse the judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, many Egyptians \u2013 including senior judges \u2013 do not view the judiciary as an independent institution. \u201cThis is a major professional mistake. Those generals should have been handed life-sentences like Mubarak,\u201d said Zakaria Abd al-Aziz, the former elected head of the Judges Club. \u201cThe killing went on for days, and they did not order anyone to stop it. The Ministry of Interior (MOI) is not the only place that should be cleansed. The judiciary needs that\u201d as well.<\/p>\n
The verdicts certainly reinforce a culture of impunity within the security services. The SSI and its departments were responsible for many human-rights violations, including mass-torture and extra-judicial killings, throughout Mubarak\u2019s 30-year rule. When protestors stormed the SSI headquarters and other governorates in March 2011, torture rooms and equipment were found in every building.<\/p>\n
Unlawful detentions, kidnappings, disappearances, systematic torture, rape, and inhuman prison conditions have all been documented since the 1980\u2019s by human-rights organizations and a few Egyptian courts. Acquitting the heads of the SSI and the CSF (the 300,000-strong institution that acted as the \u201cmuscle\u201d of Mubarak\u2019s regime), after a revolution sparked by police brutality, led directly to renewed protests in Tahrir Square. \u201cWe either get the rights of the martyrs, or die like them,\u201d chanted hundreds of thousands in Tahrir and other Egyptian squares. Sit-ins, reminiscent of the 18 days of January and February 2011 that ended Mubarak\u2019s rule, have already started.<\/p>\n
A third consequence of the verdicts concerns the empowerment of an anti-reform faction within the MOI. Based on my year-long research on Egyptian security-sector reform, this faction is already the most powerful.<\/p>\n
Following the revolution, factional struggle within the MOI became public. \u201cWe have to save face,\u201d said General Abd al-Latif Badiny, a deputy interior minister who was fired under al-Adly. \u201c[M]any officers and commanders refused to torture detainees and were against corruption, but we need a revolutionary president to empower us and clean the ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Badiny was reappointed after the revolution, but then reprimanded in November 2011, following clashes between demonstrators and police that left more than 40 protesters dead. \u201cHe was advocating dialogue with protesters, whereas al-Adly\u2019s men wanted a harsh crackdown. They got their way in the end,\u201d says Major Ahmad Ragab, the spokesperson of the reformist General Coalition of Police Officers (GCPO), which seeks to establish an official police syndicate and reform the security services along apolitical, professional lines.<\/p>\n
The verdicts will significantly affect two other processes: revolutionary forces\u2019 capacity to mobilize, and thus to place pressure on the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), and the presidential elections. The objectives of those protesting the verdicts in Tahrir and other squares include: a judicial purge; a law that would ban Mubarak\u2019s senior officials from holding political posts for ten years; new trials for al-Aldy\u2019s generals; and removal of the general prosecutor (who was appointed by Mubarak).<\/p>\n
There are also calls, still undeveloped, for greater unity ahead of the presidential run-off election on June 16-17. Such appeals range from demanding an immediate transfer of power to a coalition of revolutionary presidential candidates (although the mechanism is vague) to the formation of a united presidential front in the runoff, with Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brothers (MB) as President and left-leaning Nasserist Hamadin Sabahi and liberal-leaning moderate-Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh as Vice-Presidents. MPs have already called on the three figures to come to the parliament and negotiate a coalition.<\/p>\n
The verdicts are likely to boost support in the runoff for Morsi, who split the Islamist vote with two other candidates in the election\u2019s first round. Moreover, a significant share of the non-Islamist revolutionary vote will go to Morsi, owing to the absence of other revolutionary alternatives. The common saying in Tahrir is: \u201cWe\u2019ve got differences with Morsi, but we\u2019ve got blood with [Ahmed] Shafiq,\u201d Mubarak\u2019s last prime minister and Morsi\u2019s opponent in the runoff. Pro-revolution, non-Islamist, and non-MB candidates received almost 9.7 million votes in the first round of the presidential election. The majority of these voters will probably now support Morsi, as opposed to staying home (the general drift before the verdicts).<\/p>\n
The MB must still decide for inclusiveness if it wants to attract the support of Aboul Fotouh and Sabahi voters in the runoff against Shafiq. But, for now, Tahrir and other squares are once again uniting the pro-change forces, whether Islamist or not. The key challenge for Egyptian revolutionaries is to sustain that unity, establish a leadership coalition, translate their chants into concrete demands, and maintain the pressure during implementation. Egypt\u2019s revolution continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":26192,"template":"","class_list":["post-17084","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/17084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}