Statement from Ayman Nour’s family

Ayman Nour is a political prisoner in Egypt. A liberal democratic, he was charged with falsifying signitures when registering his party, Ghad (Tomorrow), and jailed in December 2005. He came second to President Hosni Mubarak in November 2005 Presidenital elections and has been viewed by commentators as the greatest challenge to Mubarak’s son and toted successor Gamal Mubarak.
Statement by Nour’s family on the anniversary of the presidential elections in Egypt.

This week marks the anniversary of the first presidential elections in Egypt’s history which took place on September 7, 2005. This week also Dr. Ayman Nour, leader of Al-Ghad party and the second candidate according to the results of the presidential elections, almost completes one year in prison for allegedly having forged Al-Ghad party powers-of-attorney.

We receive both events with contradicting feelings due to the severe deterioration in Nour’s health after having suffered coronary artery, diabetes and high blood pressure complications. Thus, continuing to enforce the five-year sentence would represent a death sentence to Nour, a matter organized by Article 36 of the law governing prisons which deals with release for medical reasons. This issue is also governed by Article 149 of the Egyptian Constitution which entitles the President exclusive authority to grant pardon or reduce the sentence. Dear Sir, Today there are people celebrating the one year anniversary of the election considering it a sign of democratic progress. There are also those who believe it useful for the President to use the exclusive authority vested in him by the Constitution by suspending the penalty or considering the year Nour spent in prison sufficient due to the extremely hard conditions, the unjust and harsh treatment he was subjected to. It has become clear that those who wish to show their ability in serving the regime are focusing on harassing Nour through depriving him of his basic human right guaranteed by the Constitution and the Prisons Law. It is enough to point out the decision to prevent him from writing in a clear violation of the Constitution, the law and prison regulations. He was also prevented from receiving treatment and having an urgent artery operation at his own expense. Moreover, he is under 24-hour surveillance in prison, prevent from movement and correspondence in violation of the law and prison regulations. He is also prevented from receiving the special food for his health condition from outside the prison which led him to go on hunger strike more than once in objection. The Administrative Judiciary Court is also considering a number of relevant lawsuits, the decision related to the first of which is expected on 26 September.

We appeal to you for immediate intervention to save Ayman Nour’s life and for a wise call for a stance that takes all the conditions of the case, which we do not wish to go into now and which are known to everyone, into consideration.

We are not asking to give Nour an equal treatment as singers, artists and others. We only call for observing the circumstances, harms and health risks and respond to a request submitted to the President months ago by 110 current parliament representatives to release Nour through a Presidential Decree in accordance with the Constitution.

The President’s response at this time in particular to the request of about one-third of the parliament representing the nation has major implications. It is worth calling for and moving to achieve to save the life of an Egyptian citizen who, on 7 September 2005, obtained over half a million votes.

Dear Sir,

We address this message to you due to our confidence in your sincere patriotism and your ability to make an effort in line with the dedication we know you enjoy to your convictions and the ideas you adopt that transcend political and party differences.

We hope the God grants success to you efforts on our behalf.

Ayman Nour’s small and larger families

Dr. Ayman Nour’s Word on the One-Year Anniversary of the Presidential Election in Egypt

Ayman Nour is a political prisoner in Egypt. A liberal democratic, he was charged with falsifying signitures when registering his party, Ghad (Tomorrow), and jailed in December 2005. He came second to President Hosni Mubarak in November 2005 Presidenital elections and has been viewed by commentators as the greatest challenge to Mubarak’s son and toted successor Gamal Mubarak.

Dr. Ayman Nour’s Word on the One-Year Anniversary of the Presidential Election in Egypt
I thank those who elected me and those who imprisoned me.

Yes. Today completes a year of hope and pain. One year has passed after the first presidential election in Egypt’s history. No need to go into the details that are in the nation’s memory. Some issues are too significant to be treated as a page torn out of a book, a mountain deleted from a map, a moon the blue fire of which can be blown out or a river that an administrative decision can detain and change its course.

The bruises, wounds and broken bones we suffer are not important because of a price that some chose to raise. It is important to realize that the clock will not turn back. We should not accept that it does.

It is not important to save your feathers, losing your dignity and our stance and giving up what is not yours to give up.

The “official” results, despite all the changes they were subject to, say that over half a million voters, representing 7.8% of Egyptian voters, dreamt with us of the hope to change.

Yes. The dream is not yet fulfilled. However, when people exercise their legitimate right to dream the day must come soon when these legitimate dreams are fulfilled.

The people’s living dreams represent a statement the strongest censor can not delete. He may be able to postpone them but he does not have the power to delete them or avoid their explosion.

One year has passed and every spot in this country -the villages, the cities, the farmland, the south, the streets, the alleys, the mosques and the churches- smell of heroism.

One year has passed since that day on 7 September 2005 when millions of Egyptians looked for their votes in vain. The doors they knocked on were slammed in their faces because those who refused to allow them to
vote using the ID cards restricted this right to 25% of the citizens to whom they gave the right to choose their ruler.

These people were only armed with the desire for change and reform. Their bare hands were capable of changing criteria, modifying policies, renewing values and changing theories. This was not possible, however, because they were deprived of their right to vote.

When the amendment to article 76 was announced in February 2005 the authority had already closed the door to issuing voting cards and refused to allow citizens to vote using their ID cards as is the case with presidential elections worldwide. Voting cards that determine local constituencies are irrelevant in presidential elections because
it is an election to choose the country’s president and where every citizen is a voter.

Al-Ghad Party Media Center
كلمة د. أيمن نور … بمناسبة مرور عام على
>الانتخابات الرئاسية في مصر>
> شكرا لمن انتخبوني وشكرا لمن سجنوني
>
> .. نعم اليوم هم المتمم لعام من الأمل
>والألم.. عام مر علي انتخابات رئاسة
>الجمهورية الأولي في تاريخ مصر.
> .. لا داعي للتفاصيل التي لم تخرج من دائرة
>ذاكرة الأمة فهناك أمور أكبر من أن
>تكون صفحة تنتزع من كتاب، أو جبلا يحذف من
>خريطة، أو قمرا تنفخ فيه فتنطفئ
>شعلته الزرقاء، أو نهرا نعتقله بقرار
>إداري فيغير مجراه ومساره..
> .. ليس مهما كل ما نعانيه من كسور ورضوض
>وكدمات.. بفعل ثمن أراد البعض أن يكون
>باهظا.. المهم أن تدرك أن عقارب الساعة لن
>تعود إلي الخلف ولا ينبغي أن نقبل أن
>تعود.
> .. ليس مهما أن تنجو بريشك، وتفقد كرامة
>وصلابة موقفك، وتفرط فيما لا تملك
>التفريط فيه.
> .. النتائج »الرسمية« رغم كل ما تعرضت له
>من مغايرة في الرصد والجمع والخصم
>تقول. إن هناك ما يزيد عن نصف مليون ناخب
>يمثلون 7.8٪ من الناخبين المصريين
>حلموا معنا بالأمل في التغيير.
> .. نعم لم يتحقق الحلم بعد.. لكن عندما
>تمارس الشعوب حقها المشروع في الحلم
>لابد وأن يأتي قريبا ذلك اليوم الذي تدرك
>فيه أحلامها المشروعة..
> .. أحلام الشعوب الحية، هي جملة لا يملك
>أعتي رقيب أن يشطبها، قد يؤجلها، قد
>يؤخرها، لكنه لا يملك أن يحذفها، أو يتدارك
>انفجارها..
> .. عام مضي.. وما زالت رائحة البطولة تفوح
>من كل بقاع هذا الوطن من قراه ومدنه
>ريفه وصعيده، شوارعه وحواريه، مساجده
>وكنائسه..
> .. عام مضي علي ذلك اليوم ٧ سبتمبر 2005، الذي
>خرج فيه ملايين من المصريين
>يبحثون عن أصوات لهم، دون جدوي، ليطرقوا
>أبوابا أو صدها في وجههم من رفضوا أن
>يكون التصويت بالبطاقة الشخصية قاصرين هذا
>الحق علي 25٪ من المواطنين أصحاب
>الحق في اختيار من يحكمهم..
> .. خرج هؤلاء العزل من كل الأسلحة غير
>الرغبة في التغيير، غير إرادة الإصلاح..
> كان بإمكانهم أن يقلبوا بيديهم العاريتين
>مقاييس، ويبدلوا سياسات، ويجددوا
>قيما ويغيروا نظريات، لكن كيف هذا وقد
>حرموا عمدا من حق التصويت.
> .. عندما تم إعلان تعديل المادة 76 في
>فبراير 2005 كانت السلطة أغلقت الباب
>أمام استخراج البطاقات الانتخابية ورفضت
>أن تفتح الباب ثانية قبل الانتخابات
>بعد أن رفضت أن يكون الانتخاب بالبطاقة
>الشخصية مثل الانتخابات الرئاسية في كل
>دول العالم.. حيث تنتفي قيمة البطاقة
>الانتخابية والتي تستهدف تحديد الدائرة
>المحلية التي سيختار الناخب نائبه عن هذه \nwww.elghad.org
>

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>الدائرة دون غيرها وهو ما لا قيمة له
>في حالة انتخابات رئاسية المرشح فيها هو
>لكل الوطن وكذلك الناخب فيها هو كل
>مواطن..
>
>
>المركز الإعلامي لحزب ال

Torture and dictatorship: On which side do we stand?

“Their punches and kicks came one after the other… There were moments of so much pain… targeting all my body. They started repeating one sentence, “What the fuck brought you today?”"

State Security officers had arrested democracy activist Mohamed al-Sharqawi on May 25 after he left a peaceful anti-government demonstration in downtown Cairo.

One of the officers ordered his pants to be removed and began squeezing his left testicle.

“The pain was terrible. He kept doing it for three minutes, during which I was screaming and asking him to stop so I could catch my breath. They ordered me to bend over. I refused, but they forced me.” Al-Sharqawi said officers then sodomized him with a roll of cardboard.

The NDP rules via a culture of fear in Egypt, treating democracy and human rights with contempt. Despite this $2 billion and almost $600 million a year in US and EU aid respectively, augments state funds, much of which is never seen on the ground.

Liberal opposition leader Ayman Nour, 41, is one person paying the price. Three months after becoming leader of Ghad (Tomorrow), in October 2006, he was arrested for forging signatures to register his party. On bail he came a distant second to the incumbent Hosni Mubarak, 78, in September’s Presidential elections, said by monitors to have been rigged. In December he was jailed for 5-years with an appeal declined, despite a key defendant claiming state security forced his statement and a prosecutor’s call for a retrial.

At the same time as Nour’s appeal in May President Mubarak’s son Gamal, 43, thought of as being groomed to replace his father, was spotted by an Al-Jazerra reporter entering the White House on which was later admitted as being a secret visit to Bush, Cheney and Rice.

“We’re all very furious about this,” Gameela Ismali, Newsweek’s Cairo correspondent and Nour’s wife, told me. “While we were being beaten in the street, assaulted, detained, he’s been received there. And then they come out and talk about democracy.”

The West is employing realpolitik rather than humanitarian motives for their alliance with Egypt, preferring a dictatorship to democratically elected Islamists or possibly unstable liberals. Crucial to US and British control in the oil rich Middle East and Islamic Arab world, Egypt is also an authoritative moderate regional force against Iran and Hamas. A bid in the US House of Representatives in June to reduce aid to Cairo by $100 million to show displeasure at democratic setbacks, with that aid to be split between Darfur refugee assistance and fighting the global AIDS epidemic, was narrowly defeated. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a letter to lawmakers called Egypt “a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East.”

During its 25-year reign the NDP has asphyxiated its nation’s people and pluralistic structures. Since April government crackdowns have been harsh. Two judges have been imprisoned for claiming NDP electoral fraud in the 2005 elections; 100s of democratic protestors, journalists and 10 bloggers critical of the government have been detained. Mubarak, who promised a new era of democratic reform last year, has tightened his grip on the judiciary, selecting loyal judges for specific cases such as Nour’s.

Abuses have drawn barely any recognition in Washington, which said it was merely “disappointed” by the 2-year extension in April of a 25-year-old emergency decree, allowing the government to prevent gatherings of more than five individuals and hold people – at present totalling around 15,000 – indefinitely without charge. The major design of Bush’s second term, the radical pushing of democracy internationally, has gone.

“The West’s hypocritical,” says Ahmed Esmat, a 21-year-old electronic engineering student. “They lecture about democracy but help dictators, and it’s citizens here that suffer.”

Isamli is agonized by the “hollow statements” from the West. “[They should] stop backing this dictatorship,” she asserts. “I think Egyptian’s are really furious. Everybody can see clearly that Bush and his administration have other priorities in the Middle East. [Fine] But, then he should stop mentioning anything about freedoms, democracy and reform”

With a repressed liberal movement such anger leads to greater support for Islamists. Officially banned due to their religious links, the US feared Muslim Brotherhood now control almost twenty percent of Parliament after many of its members stood as independents at the elections. Human rights activist Dr Saad Eddin Ibrahim, whose organisation completed election monitoring and exit polls, noted: “The Muslim Brotherhood got 4% of the vote. About half of them are protest votes [overall] giving them 20% of the seats.”

Ibrahim, 67, has felt the emergency law’s effects. He was imprisoned in 2000, until his acquittal in 2003, for criticizing Egypt’s political process despite his having only ever undertaken peaceful human-rights protests. “I was subjected to 45 days of sleep deprivation,” he told me. “Since I became a cause celebre they were careful not to use the crude torture they usually use and that they used with others [from his organization].”

The Muslim Brotherhood are also regularly targeted by the government. They claimed to have had 300 of their members detained at the protest in May that saw Al-Sharqawi’s arrest. The majority of the 15,000 imprisoned without charge are thought to be Islamists.

The Egyptian government is swift to absolve itself of any responsibility for abuses. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif assured that, “We will never use the emergency law other than to protect the citizen and the security of the nation and combat terrorism.”

To Ibrahim, instead of finding an ally in fighting “terrorism” in the NDP, the West should be pushing further for democracy: “To me this is the only way democracy will take place. Or at least the support for the autocrats has to be withdrawn. We can fight them, we have seen that. But when they give them arms and aid it weakens our ability to bring them down, to get them to bargain and compromise.”

The West’s strategic relationship with Egypt, and fear of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, means democracy and human rights can wait for Egyptians. This neglect for a major ally’s use of torture and degradation of pluralistic political belief exposes the lie behind neo-con idealism, Bush’s platform and the Iraqi war.

There leaves little opportunity for redress by Egyptians: “I’m not happy,” says 26-year-old Mahdy Shahine, a communications undergraduate. “In the UK you can say anything about your government. In Egypt nobody can.” The effect, with 25-years of de-politicization of the population by the NDP, is apathy. Few young people are involved in politics of any form and there is little associational behaviour. In a country with a median age of 24 the effect is widespread, ensuring that on asking many young people to tell me their views on their government I receive only a familiar Egyptian tut, a shake of the head and the contact of wrists, suggesting handcuffs, as an answer.

Letter from Ayman Nour to the European Parliament

 

 

Ayman Nour is a political prisoner in Egypt. A liberal democratic, he was charged with falsifying signitures when registering his party, Ghad (Tomorrow), and jailed in December 2005. He came second to President Hosni Mubarak in November 2005 Presidenital elections and has been viewed by commentators as the greatest challenge to Mubarak’s son and toted successor Gamal Mubarak.

This letter was smuggled out of prison three days ago in Arabic in Nour’s hand writing directed to Mr Mcmillan Scott, the European parliament vice president to forward to other members. Following is a translation of the letter. Please consider the fact that he is banned from writing or giving away any papers to his lawyers or family for the third month now, and is under monitoring 24 hours a day and unable to meet anyone rather than his family or lawyers.

30 May 2006

Tura Mazraa Prison

South Cairo
From: Ayman Nour

To: Esteemed Members of the European Union

Deputy Head of the European Parliament

I address this very short letter to you and to all the honorable and free people in the world, to all the representatives of the free people and those whose consciences refuse oppression, injustice, false accusations and merciless murder.
My letter is very short due to the circumstances out of my control restricting my freedom and depriving me of my human rights, the foremost of which is the right to write, express and reject the injustice and suffering I am subjected to!!
The day my freedom was taken away in January 2005, your great efforts –after God and combined with the efforts of my supporters- played a crucial role in my release. The first faces I saw –an honor to me- were the faces of a delegation of European male and female parliament representatives. Your visit to me during my imprisonment is not only reason for breaking the doors of this prison and my temporary release, it also gave me the possibility of exercising my right in running for the first presidential election. I was imprisoned to prevent me from running for the election in January 2005. With God’s grace and the enthusiasm of the reformists I was able to come in second to the president and be the only competitor to him and his son despite the rigging and all forms of injustice, defamation and changing the results. I also paid an extra price when my constituency’s election results were rigged thus causing me to lose my permanent seat in the parliament due to blatant rigging. Some of you were in Cairo and witnessed a part of the tragedy.
Today I pay a new and high price as punishment for having run for the presidential election. I am also being prevented from continuing the democratic reform path in Egypt so that the current regime can strengthen its presence by claiming there is no alternative for it other than fundamentalism and terrorism, thus forcing people inside and outside Egypt to accept its presence.
Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I do not pay this price alone. My children, family, party, my whole generation and all the reformists in this country pay the price, too. I lost my freedom, my work as a lawyer, journalist and chairman of the first and only civil political party to be established in a quarter of a century, the duration of Mubarak’s rule. I am threatened of remaining in prison for five years and prevented from exercising my political rights for another five years to guarantee that Egypt is inherited by Mubarak’s son, as well as making me an example to anyone who thinks of breaking the power monopoly not only in Egypt but in the Arab world!!
I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case not for my sake, nor for the sake of my children or my party that is being destroyed, my human rights which are violated in this prison every morning, or my life which illness, injustice and oppression are eating away at. I ask you to defend my fair case to keep hope alive for the coming generations which we do not want to lose hope. It is for these generations that I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case and to visit me in prison to witness the truth which the Egyptian regime is very good at concealing and telling lies to prove the opposite. Free people of the world. I am dying alone for a principle, for my country and for freedom. Please raise my voice before my spirit departs this world.

Ayman Nour