No.309 on a list of 529 people condemned to die – a lawyer jailed alongside the people he had spent months trying to help, caught up in the relentless crackdown against anyone who dares to challenge Egypt’s military-backed government.
But as a son of the town of Matai in Egypt’s Nile Delta, 36-year-old Ahmed Eid Ahmed Telb is not alone in this fate. In this modest municipality of 50,000 residents, the extraordinary mass conviction means approximately one in every 100 citizens of Matai was sentenced to death on Monday.
The presiding judge allowed just two short sessions of 30 minutes and one hour to hear the case in which no evidence was presented, many of the defendants were tried in absentia and many defence lawyers were prevented from attending the trial.
About 220 kilometres south of Cairo, Matai has a small town feel. Fresh fruit and vegetables are on display at the markets, its main street bustles with schoolchildren, shoppers and pedestrians, and elaborately decorated tuk-tuks jostle for business with minivans, cars and buses.
But for a time last year – six weeks after the military forced the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Mursi from power and security police used lethal force to disperse huge sit-ins – the Minya governorate in which Matai sits was the scene of some of the country’s worst violence.
Minya is home to one of Egypt’s largest Coptic Christian populations. It also has a significant community of Brotherhood supporters who were furious that Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been overthrown.
More than 1000 of those protesting for Mursi’s reinstatement were killed when security forces cleared the Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda protests in Cairo.
In an angry response, Mursi supporters ransacked several police stations and destroyed churches in Minya, accusing the country’s Christian minority of supporting the military-led takeover.
The 529 who have been sentenced to death are alleged to have attacked the police station of Matai on August 14, where they are accused of killing the deputy head of the station, Colonel Mustafa Ragab, as well as attempting to murder two other officers.
There is no doubt the attack on the Matai station occurred and that the deputy police chief was killed, but there are serious doubts as to whether the 529 people charged were even present during the incident, legal representatives and families say.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/in-egypt-a- ... z2xUjjhRG0
Egyptian justice
Egyptian justice
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”