Fair trial under the rule of law, surely has variants. One uncanny type, is the Egyptian model.May be because, democracy there, is in infancy, despite the age of that ancient civilisation. Last Saturday, May 16, an Egyptian court sentenced the first democratically elected, but ousted President Mohammed Morsi and 105 others, mainly from the abolished, but feared Muslim Brotherhood, to death, for their role during the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. A week earlier, an Egyptian court after several rigmarole, also sentenced former President Mubarak and his two sons, to three years in prison for corruption, during his 30 years rule.
Morsi and company were sentenced to death for their role in a mass jail break, during the 2011 uprising that eventually ended the Mubarak era. According to media report, armed members of Hamas entered Egypt through illegal tunnels during the uprising and taking advantage of the crisis, they fought their way to various prisons, to release Morsi and several other members of the Islamic brotherhood, who were in jail. In the process many prison guards were killed, while thousands of other prisoners were set free. Parts of the jails stormed by the attackers, were also destroyed.
Amnesty International (AI) has, however, described the trial, as a charade. According to Al Jazeera report, Al said: “condemning Mohammed Morsi to death after more grossly unfair trials shows a complete disregard for human rights … he was held for months incommunicado without judicial oversight and that he didn’t have a lawyer to represent him”. Again Morsi and 12 other defendants were last month sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, for their role in the detention and torture of protesters outside the presidential palace, in the uprising, in December 2012; that eventually culminated in his ouster bythe military. For Morsi, there will be several more trial days ahead, as there are many more charges against him.
While it may be tenable to hold Morsi and his Islamic Brotherhood, partly responsible for mismanaging the gains of the 2011 revolution that toppled the authoritarian rule of Mubarak, it is ridiculous that a so called democratically elected government of Gen Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, would allow this abuse of the judicial process, for temporal gains. Unless there is a change, Egypt’s sputtering democracy may wobble and fumble to a final stop, in the nearest future. According to assistant Professor Abdullah Al- Arian of Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service in Qatar, there are over 41,000 Egyptians in prison on political charges.
In an article: “The many trials of Mohammed Morsi”, the history scholar holds the judiciary, as an accomplice in the degradation of democracy in Egypt. He wrote: “There is a method to madness that has become the Egyptian judiciary.” He furthered, “not to be outdone, the Egyptian judiciary has played an equally critical role throughout these events. Its ruling throughout the post Mubarak’s transition from the dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament to its failure to convict any official from the former regime ensure that any attempt at revolutionary change would be thwarted”.
Conversely for former President Mubarak, he and his two sons got a mere three years jail term, for what had been dubbed by the media, as the ‘presidential palaces’ affair. The media has not missed the irony that Mubarak’s trial was conducted in the same court, were Morsi was earlier sentenced to 20 years in jail. Again unlike Morsi, Mubarak was granted bail in 2013, and has since been staying at a military hospital. However like Morsi, he faced several charges after his ouster in 2011, but the tide changed in his favour, as soon as the revolution that toppled him was truncated, following the ouster of the Islamic Brotherhood, which won the first democratic election, but couldn’t manage their victory.
In December 2012, this column had forewarned President Morsi thus: “Political power apparently tastes like a honeyed alcohol or a sweetened intoxicant. And when there is substance abuse as in most third world countries, the result is ruination. But for the eternal vigilance of Egyptians, President Mohammed Morsy’s careless overdose of that dangerous drug would have turned to an addiction. Nonetheless, Morsy and his Muslim brotherhood despite warning signals from their countrymen appears hell bent on taking that historical country through the ignominious road of the disgraced former President, Hosni Mubarak. By his request to be allowed to exercise autocratic powers for a period, the President was asking for a medical clearance for a pre-arranged insanity in other not to be culpable for a planned murder”.
