Prominent human rights defender and director of The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) Gamal Eid was formally questioned in what the rights group calls a politically motivated case designed to punish independent organizations.
This statement was originally published on anhri.info on 28 July 2021
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said, that yesterday Counselor Ali Mokhtar, the newly mandated investigative judge for case No. 173 of 2011, held the first investigation session with ANHRI’s director, lawyer Gamal Eid, 10 years after this fabricated politically motivated case was opened. The investigation session, which lasted about three hours, was exclusively dedicated to viewing the case file and the acts attributed to ANHRI or its director.
Upon looking at the approximately two thousand pages long case file, Gamal Eid and the lawyers accompanying him were surprised that:
- A large part of the file contains photocopies of legal research and reports issued by ANHRI, such as a report on prolonged pretrial detention and its dangers, reports on imprisoned journalists and prisoners of opinion in Egypt, as well as the poor conditions of prisoners and prisons, alongside investigations and claims by National Security Officer “Mahmoud Ali Mahmoud” that these reports aim to topple the state and stir public opinion.
- The false investigations by the same officer, “Mahmoud Ali Mahmoud,” allege that ANHRI received funding from Human Rights Watch and Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, insisting on the false claim that both are funding organizations and hostile towards the Egyptian regime.
- The file included several memoranda and reports bearing conflicting and contradicting information, as one report claims that ANHRI was established in 1995, while another report claims that ANHRI was established in 2004, a third report that it did not pay taxes, and a fourth report that it did pay taxes, which shows confusion in the fabrication of the case and relying on different sources to fabricate, so that there is conflict and contradiction of information.
- The picture became very clear, when the State Security officer wrote in his investigations, that ANHRI and its director played a major role in the January incidents and the attempts to topple the state! This is what ANHRI and its director admit. ANHRI even confirms that participating in the January Revolution “not the January incidents” is a source for pride and that the January Revolution was an attempt to save Egypt from corruption and tyranny.
The absence of important original papers and documents from the case file!
- Also, upon reading the case file, Gamal Eid and the lawyers were surprised by the absence of important documents previously submitted in the case that prove that the allegations and investigations by the National Security Officer that Gamal Eid received grants on his personal account are lies and fabrications, as the lawyers and Gamal Eid had previously submitted documents from the Commercial International Bank – CIB proving that the transfers that Gamal Eid received on his personal account, were in fact transfers from his account in New York, which he opened while he was working and living in New York, meaning that the documents that confirm and prove that transfers from Gamal Eid’s account to Gamal Eid’s account were absent and were nowhere to be found in the file, although they were previously submitted in 2016 during the consideration of the asset freeze case.
10 years of defamation, revenge, and state officials intervening in the case
- ANHRI’s director, lawyer Gamal Eid, said, “We have suffered from defamation and prosecution for 10 years, starting with the participation of the investigative judges in the first part of the case Ashraf El-Ashmawy and Sameh Abu Zeid, who went out in press conferences even before the verdict in the case came out to accuse civil society organizations by their names, they even allowed state officials, such as the back then Minister of Justice during the January revolution – Adel Abdel Hamid, and Fayza Abul-Naga, to hold press conferences to attack human rights organizations despite the illegality of such an action, while the Court of Cassation acquitted all the institutions and individuals in the first part of the case, it even praised these organizations and commended them.
- When Judge Hisham Abdel Meguid assumed the postition of investigative judge, he froze our assets and banned us from traveling since 2016. He left the media close to the state to smear independent human rights organizations for five years, and the travel ban and the asset freeze are still in place until today.
- ANHRI and its director, Gamal Eid, hope that the performance of Counsellor Ali Mokhtar, the current investigative judge in the case, will be different, and that he will uphold the rule of law. Perhaps the disappearance of important papers and documents from the case, as well as the conflicting reports prepared by state-controlled parties and the fabricated investigations full of lies clarify the true nature of the case and the retaliatory objective against independent human rights organizations, after international organizations and some other organizations were excluded, leaving only the independent organizations.
- ANHRI also hopes that the investigation with its director, Gamal Eid, will be more fair than the investigations that followed the police assaults on him by some police officers, the theft of his car and being doused in paint, in all of which the defendants enjoyed impunity despite the prosecution hearing witnesses and watching security cameras’ footage, yet the investigations were frozen!
Gamal Eid said: “I showed the Counselor the Police Academy shield, which the Ministry of Interior gave me when I trained its leaders, back when it was still claiming to welcome the reform of the ministry of interior initiative. I also showed him a pamphlet and a brochure of al-Karama Public Libraries, which I have established in popular neighborhoods to serve the citizens of these areas, and which were shut down in a police manner. He who spends his own money on public libraries, does not topple the state, but rather tries to build society and the state, while tyranny and the absence of the rule of law are what destroys states and societies.”
The session was set for Sunday, August 1, to continue the investigation.
