H.E. Mohammed Hosni Mubarak
President
Office of the President
Oruba Palace, Sharia Oruba
Heliopolis
Cairo
Arab Republic of Egypt
Your Excellency:
We write to express alarm and concern over the intimidation, harassment and arrests of our fellow journalists in Egypt. For nearly seventy years, the Overseas Press Club of America has been closely involved world-wide with issues of freedom of the media and its right to expression. Unfortunately, recent years have seen a marked deterioration of press freedom in Egypt. We list some recent incidents:
Abd al-Monim Mahmud, a blogger and a journalism graduate of Cairo University, was arrested in mid-April at the Cairo airport by security officers as he waited to board a plane for Sudan. He was working on a television story on human rights abuses in the Arab world for a London-based satellite channel, al-Hiwar. The previous day, his parents’ home in Alexandria was raided by State Security officers — apparently hoping to arrest him. Mahmud has been living in Cairo for the past two years.
The day after Mahmud@quot;s arrest, he was questioned all day and accused of belonging to a banned organization, being an administrator of it, and funding an armed group. While it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, it is the largest opposition bloc in your parliament and known to include tens of thousands of members, so his association with it seems to be a pretext for his arrest. He has been an outspoken critic of human rights abuses in your country, and has given speeches at international conferences in Doha and in Cairo about abuse of civil rights and torture. He had declared that he, too, had been a torture victim in 2003. We have not heard news of his release.
On March 12 of this year, the Alexandria Court of Appeals upheld the four-year jail sentence of Abd al-Karim Nabil Sulaiman, who had been arrested in November, 2006 for articles posted on his blog in which he criticized excessive governmental authority and, as a secularist, wrote critically of Egypt’s highest religious institutions. He was judged guilty of “inciting hatred of Islam,” for which his sentence was three years and one more year for “insulting the President.” In our opinion, sir, it is an insult both to you and to democracy that a year in prison is punishment for “insulting” you. Such laws are profoundly misguided and should be revoked.
Two days before the arrest of Mahmud, secularist blogger and activist, Mohammad al-Sharqawi, found that in his absence, his home had been entered and his laptop stolen, though valuables and cash were left untouched. The computer contained an unreleased video showing police abuse. Earlier, al-Sharqawi himself had been a victim of police torture.
On January 13, Huwaida Taha Mitwalli, an al-Jazeera journalist, was detained by security officers as she was boarding a plane for Doha. They confiscated tapes she had with her for a documentary she was making on abuse and torture in Egypt, and she was charged with “practicing activities that harm the national interest of the country” and “possessing and giving false pictures of the internal situation in Eygpt that could undermine the dignity of the country.” She has since been sentenced to a six-month term in prison.
Mr. President, if the “dignity”of your country is being undermined, it is by actions like these that threaten Egypt@quot;s credibility as a democracy. Would it not be wiser to open the floor to critics of your administration and address their complaints? In so doing, you would reinforce democratic principles and reassure the world that the core of your country is stable and that you are a reliable friend for peace and progress at home and abroad.
We urge you, Mr. President, to exert every effort to end all intimidation and harassment of journalists. They are guilty of no crime beyond the pursuit of their profession, which is a vital instrument for the preservation of liberty and justice.
May we have the courtesy of a reply?
Respectfully yours,
Jacqueline Albert-Simon Larry Martz
Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
Atef Mohamed Ebeid
Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Sharia Maglis esh-sha’ab
Cairo
Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: (011.20.2) 366-8048
Nabil Fahmy
Ambassador of Eygpt to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Arab Republic of Eygpt
3521 International Court, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: (202) 244-5131
Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt
to the United Nations
304 East 44th St.
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 949-5999
Francis J. Ricciardone, Jr. The Editor
U.S. Ambassador to Eygpt Egyptian Gazette
Embassy of the United States of America editor@egy.com
8 Kamal el Din Salah Street
Garden City, Cairo Claude Salhani, Editor
Egypt The Middle East Times
Fax: (011.20.2) 797-3200 editor@metimes.com
The Editor
Weekly Ahram
editor@weekly.ahram.org.eg