Police aggression against a lawyer in
midday
In a shameful incident, not the first of its
kind, a police officer aggresses, insults and beats a lawyer in bright
daylight.
On Thursday the 7th of July 2005,
around 12 o’clock noon, a police officer by the name of Adel Borai stopped
lawyer Fathi Bassiouni and his client Mohamed Awad upon their exit from
the North Cairo court in Abasseyya. The officer confiscated their IDs
without giving reasons and held them on the street without an explanation,
while aggressing them with an obscene language, before his men starting
beating them causing severe injuries and fractures to both of them. The
two men were saved by the intervention of passers by and a number of
lawyers who gathered around them, provoked by this police brutality. Upon
the gathering of the crowd the officer and his men threatened to shoot at
them and then escaped from the scene of his crime!
Lawyer Fathi Bassiouni recalls the day:
On Thursday I was outside the Abbaseyya
court house with Mohamed Awad, a relative of one of my clients. We were
walking towards my car which I had parked nearby. I had papers of my
client with me which I had to present in another court complex. Suddenly I
saw a sergeant in plainclothes stop Mohamed with his had and ask him for
his ID. I was just about to ask the sergeant for the reason, when an
officer, also in plainclothes, come out of a police car and asked for both
our IDs. Mohamed showed his ID and I told him that I was a lawyer and got
my papers out to show him my Bar Association card. He snatched them out of
my hand and put the two IDs in his pocket and said we should wait for a
while. I asked: Why? He did not answer me. I told him, please give us our
IDs back. He did not reply either. I was in a hurry because it was
Thursday and if I did not submit my client’s papers today the papers would
have to wait until Saturday, so I told Mohamed let us go now and leave the
IDs until later. At this point the police officer pulled me from my arm
preventing me from leaving. I pulled my arm away, upon which he swore at
me and punched me in the face twice. My glasses broke and I was injured
and could no longer see properly. I found three other men surrounding us,
one of them had a large wooden board in his hand and started beating us
with is all over our bodies. I fell to the ground and saw a lot of blood
gushing out of me head and felt I was going to die. Then I knew that they
took my to Ain Shams Specialized Hospital and that Mohamed was taken to El
Zahra’a hospital.
I had a cut wound in my scalp which was
stitched in the hospital. I did not remove the stitches yet. I also had
two wounds in my face below my left eye. For a whole day I felt I was not
OK. Now I still feel numb in my head and it still hurts on the right side
of my body where they kicked me and hit me with the wooden board. They
discharged me from hospital on Friday before I finish my treatment. They
were pressured by the police so that they can claim my condition does not
need long treatment.
Friday night I went to the prosecution
office. There I found that the officer had filed a complaint that I had
aggressed him and they brought investigations one by an officer by the
name of Sami Lotfi saying that I aggressed the officer while he was doing
his job and the prosecution was questioning me as an aggressor and not as
a victim. They tried to persuade me to give up my complaint. Mohamed Awad
had fractures and despite that they intimidated him and made him drop his
complaint. The public attorney tried to convince me to drop the complaint
and told me we are all Egyptians and the reputation of Egypt is important
for each of us and we do not want to defame the reputation of Egypt!! I
receive phone calls asking me to drop the complaint. I am a lawyer
defending peoples’ rights. How can I give up on my right!!
This incident summarizes the situation of the
law in Egypt. Defenders of the law are aggressed by the same bodies which
are supposedly enforcing the law!
The incident is not a mere mistake or an
individual transgression. It is a reflection of a systematic policy of the
police that is full of transgressions and violations which have gone so
far as to happen in the middle of the streets, at bright day light and in
front of everybody, affecting everybody, including members of the
judiciary and law defenders.
This lawyer has been considered a suspect, has
been humiliated and beaten up with no legal basis, only by the absolute
authority of the intelligence officer who is supported by an artillery of
procedures such as falsified medical reports, false investigations and
fabricated cases. It is unfortunate that the procedures involve the
general prosecution which is supposed to represent the victim. In this
case, and based on the statement of the lawyers, the prosecution was not
objective.
It has also become a routine that victims are
turned into perpetrators, where victims are expected to tolerate the
oppression and injustice in silence or else they would be defaming the
reputation of Egypt.
Egypt does not exist without Egyptians. And a
country does not exist without its citizens. Those who violate freedoms
and rights and dignity of Egyptian citizens are the ones who are defaming
Egypt’s reputation, where the Egyptian Ministry of Interior is a main
actor.
Organizations signatory to this statement:
1-
Express their solidarity with lawyer Fathi
Bassiouni and calls upon all human rights and civil society organizations
to support the bar association in its position in support of the dignity
of its members and the profession.
2-
Call for a real independence of the judiciary to
maintain a real impartiality of the investigations. In this context we
call for an enactment of the role of the investigation magistrate and
enabling citizens to access justice directly.
3-
Hold the Minister of Interior responsible for all
transgressions of the police and the policies that permit the occurrence
and persistence of those transgressions.
Signatories:
Egyptian association against torture
Nadim Center
Hisham Mubarak Law Center
Arab network for human rights information
Egyptian initiative for personal rights.
