Demanding the release of Shawkan
SUPPORTERS and friends of Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the Egyptian photojournalist known as Shawkan, have penned an open letter to President Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi calling for the release of all journalists in Egypt imprisoned on press-related charges. They draw particular attention to Shawkan’s case as well as that of Abdullah AlFakharany, 23-year-old board member of the pro-Brotherhood news network Rassd.
Shawkan, 28, has now been held in pre-trial detention for over 850 days. He was finally due to stand trial last Saturday with 737 other defendants, on charges ranging from attempted murder and possession of weapons and ammunition to threatening public peace, disrupting the constitution, membership of a banned group and sabotaging public and private property. The trial was postponed, however, because the courtroom was too small to house all the defendants.
The case is the latest in a series of mass trials against members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political organisation recently investigated by the UK government.
According to Ahmed Abu Seif, who runs the Free Shawkan campaign, Abu Zeid “only learned about the postponement through his family”, after wondering why the prison authorities had not collected him at the expected time. Conditions in Cairo’s Tora prison are notoriously poor – “you leave your dignity at the door” – and while Shawkan’s family are permitted one visit a week, they are unable to make the journey every week from their home in Sohag, 300 miles from Cairo. His mother has told Abu Seif: “I am losing my son”.
Shawkan, who has worked for the BBC, Time and Bild, is the only journalist amongst the defendants. He was arrested on Aug 14, 2013 while on assignment for photo agency Demotix, as he approached Rabaa Al-Adawiya square in Cairo’s Nasr City district. That morning, Egyptian security forces launched a bloody assault on the square, the site of a month-long protest by supporters of President Mohammed Morsi, ousted by the military six weeks earlier. By the end of the day, Human Rights Watch estimates at least eight hundred civilians had lost their lives, and Shawkan was incarcerated.
Abu Seif is currently in the USA campaigning on Shawkan’s behalf: “Even if Egypt will not release Shawkan and other unjustly jailed journalists for the right reasons, perhaps they will do so to protect their own selfinterests. Egypt receives over US$1 billion in aid each year from the US provided they adhere to certain human rights conditions. By detaining Shawkan for over two years without trial, not only is Egypt breaking its own law but is also violating their agreement with the US and most likely other nations.”
Al-Fakharany was arrested on Aug 25, 2013, and originally charged with “disturbing the peace” as part of a separate mass trial involving senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Those charges were later “substituted” by the Prosecutor General, while Fakharany remained in custody.
After a year-long trial, AlFakharany and a number of other media workers, including Rassd colleague Samhi Mustafa, were sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of “spreading chaos”, “spreading false information” and “forming an operations room to direct the Muslim Brotherhood to defy the government”, in a plot that allegedly involved attacks on police stations and churches. One further journalist, Ibrahim al-Taher alSayed, was sentenced to death.
Egypt’s Court of Cassation last week ordered a retrial in AlFakharany’s case, accepting appeals from thirty-eight of the defendants.
The Muslim Brotherhood had been the dominant opposition voice in Egypt for decades before surging to power in the 2012 elections that followed the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Since the military overthrow of their victorious candidate, Mohammed Morsi, a year later, the Brotherhood has been banned and designated a terrorist organisation, and membership of the group is a charge routinely levelled at journalists in Egyptian courtrooms. Peter Greste, the Australian jailed for over a year for his work with Al Jazeera in Cairo, was accused of membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, a charge he decried in court as “frankly preposterous”.
Egyptian journalists have found themselves in the crosshairs of the state’s security apparatus since the military coup, collateral damage in Sisi’s attempts to ward off an Islamist insurrection. The Journalists’ Syndicate in Cairo claims that 32 media workers are currently incarcerated, and their own board member Khaled alBalshy was recently released from custody pending investigation, having been charged with inciting unlicensed protests and “assaulting security forces”.
The Journalists’ Syndicate has launched an appeal for increased medical treatment for those journalists detained, and are making Shawkan the focus of their campaign. Shawkan, who has contracted Hepatitis C since his imprisonment, and has complained of violent treatment at the hands of the prison authorities. He was rushed to Cairo’s Kasr El Aini Hospital twice in two days in late October, and in a letter from August, described growing used to his “skinny, pale body”. He refers to Tora prison as his “cemetery”. – The Independent