On Sunday 6 April, prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah is to attend the second hearing of his trial for alleged violation of the prohibitive Egyptian anti-protest legislation (“protest law”). Mr Abdel-Fattah has been charged with various alleged offences over the past few years and has been arbitrarily detained on several occasions. He is currently being tried for allegedly breaching the new anti-protest legislation, including participating in demonstrations without prior notification. He is also charged with attacking a police officer, destroying public property and obstructing traffic.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) is sending a high-level trial observation mission to assess the conformity of his hearing with international standards of fair trial.
Mr Abdel Fattah is one of the most prominent cases of a high number of activists being prosecuted for their peaceful activities under this newly-adopted law. The protest law sharply restricts peaceful assembly, giving free reign to security officers to shut down protests at will, in violation of international standards. This law confiscates the freedoms that the Egyptians have seized since January 2011 that brought about momentous changes.
There are worrying indications that the hearing may lack the basic guarantees of a fair trial. Indeed, the case is being judged by a ‘Special chamber’, a jurisdiction recently created to accelerate proceedings for terrorism cases and protest-law related cases. These trials do not take place in tribunals, as the separation of Executive and Judiciary powers requires, but in police premises, in this case held at the institute of police Sub-officer in Torah.
Egypt’s Law 107 of 2013 on the Right to Public Meetings, Processions and Peaceful Demonstrations (protest law)
Human rights organisations widely criticised the immense restrictions the law imposes on the right to peaceful assembly. The government claimed that it would take into account the comments made by civil society as well as the National Human Rights Council at the drafting stage, but none of their comments were taken into consideration in the final version of the law, which was passed on 24 November 2013 by President Adly Mansour.
This law constitutes a blatant violation of international standards as it effectively leaves to security officials the discretion to ban any protest on very vague grounds. Article 11 allows police officers to forcibly disperse any protest even if a single protester throws a stone, opening the door to collective responsibility and punishment for any individual act. The law sets prison sentences of up to five years for vague offenses such as attempting to “influence the course of justice”, “impeding production”, “impeding the interests of citizens” or “blocking traffic”, which allows the authorities to criminalize a wide range of legitimate peaceful gatherings or strikes. Not notifying a protest is punishable with a heavy fine of 30,000 EGP.
Of particular concern in the current context of electoral campaign is that the law also gives the Interior Ministry the right to ban any meeting “of a public nature” of more than 10 people in a public place, including meetings related to electoral campaigning. Since November 2013, dozens of dissidents, including Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers, secular activists and students have been arrested and are being detained under this law, simply for publicly voicing their dissent.