HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Egypt: 7,400 Civilians Tried In Military Courts
A list of civilians tried in military courts, provided by the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, an independent legal and human rights group, documents for the first time the extent to which al-Sisi’s administration has used the military justice system to expedite its harsh crackdown on opponents.
Most defendants were sentenced after mass trials that violate fundamental due process rights, and some courts relied on confessions extracted under torture, relatives of the defendants said.
“Apparently unsatisfied with tens of thousands already detained and speedy mass trials that discarded due process in the name of national security, al-Sisi essentially gave free rein to military prosecutors,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “He has handed back to the military judiciary the powerful role it enjoyed in the months after Egypt’s uprising, when the nation was governed by a council of generals.”
The list provided to Human Rights Watch documented 324 cases, identifying defendants by name, sex, home governorate, and case number, and in many cases by profession and age. The largest case involved 327 defendants.
The list did not describe the charges in each case. But a Human Rights Watch survey of about 50 Egyptian media reports since October 2014, describing the referrals of thousands of people for military trials, indicates that most of those charged in military courts were transferred there because the broad provisions of al-Sisi’s law essentially put all public property under military jurisdiction, not because they committed crimes involving the armed forces.
The media reports indicated that a large number were accused of participating in illegal or violent protests, as well as membership in or support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Since July 2013, when the military removed Mohamed Morsy, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former Brotherhood member, Egyptian judges have sentenced thousands of members of the group.
These military trials have swept up at least 86 children, as well as students, professors, and activists, including individuals who were forcibly disappeared and allegedly tortured. Military courts have handed down 21 death sentences since October 2014, though a lawyer with the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms said that none have yet been approved by the Supreme Military Court of Appeals.
In May 2015, six men were hanged following verdicts handed down by a military court in August 2014, despite evidence that some had been in detention at the time of their alleged crimes.
Human Rights Watch interviewed relatives of seven people, including four men sentenced to death and one child, who were all tried in military courts in the past year. Six told their families that agents of the Interior Ministry’s National Security branch tortured or beat them to elicit confessions, including four who were tortured with electric shocks. Five said they were forcibly disappeared by the authorities for weeks or months. In all but one case, their convictions were based in large part on the confessions, according to their relatives and case files.
In one case, following a mass trial of 27 defendants, a military court sentenced Seif al-Islam Osama, who was 15 when arrested, to three years in a juvenile detention facility for allegedly participating in an illegal protest, despite defense lawyers’ arguments that he was too young to face military trial and had not actually been a participant.
In another case, a high school student arrested in the street outside his school told his mother that National Security agents stripped him, walked on him, extinguished cigarettes on his skin, and gave him electric shocks on various parts of his body, including his genitals, to make him confess to belonging to a “terrorist cell” that planted explosives and burned electricity stations. A military court sentenced him to three years in prison.
Thousands of civilians were retroactively referred to military trials for crimes they allegedly committed before al-Sisi imposed the law. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of the civilians referred for military trial faced charges that stemmed from the violent unrest that broke out in mid-2013 after the military removed Morsy from power.
The list identified 1,468 defendants from Minya governorate – the most from any one governorate – where violent mobs attacked churches and Christian-owned homes and businesses following Morsy’s removal and the subsequent mass killing of Morsy’s supporters by security forces in August 2013.
The media reports reviewed by Human Rights Watch corroborated the retroactive referral of hundreds of Minya residents to military trials for participating in the 2013 violence.
Another military trial involves Sohaib Sa’ad, a 22-year-old man arrested on a Cairo street on June 1, 2015, as he walked with friends. The authorities forcibly disappeared Sa’ad for four weeks, during which time he alleged he was tortured. Sa’ad, who used to film protests and sell the footage to news media, had been charged in a prominent case targeting three journalists from Al Jazeera and was detained from January 2, 2014, until February 12, 2015, when he was released pending retrial.
On July 10, 2015, almost two weeks after he reappeared, the Defense Ministry published a video on YouTube announcing the arrest of Sa’ad and others in what it said was “one of the most dangerous terrorist cells belonging to a special operations unit of the terrorist Brotherhood organization.” The video showed Sa’ad and several others confessing their alleged roles in the group. The court hearing the Al Jazeera case sentenced Sa’ad and the other defendants to three years in August 2015, and on April 3, 2016, the military court hearing the terrorism case against Sa’ad and 27 other defendants postponed its verdict to April 24.
Such mass trials, in both Egypt’s regular and military judiciaries, have violated due process guarantees and failed to establish individual guilt. In 2014, a criminal court judge issued 220 death sentences against defendants accused in mass trials of participating in Minya’s 2013 violence. In February 2016, a military court mistakenly handed down a life sentence to a 3-year-old child following a mass trial against 116 protesters from Fayoum governorate, whose case was transferred to a military court under al-Sisi’s law.
Egypt’s military courts are administered by the Defense Ministry. The judges are serving military officers. Military court proceedings typically do not protect basic due process rights or satisfy the requirements of independence and impartiality of courts of law. Children can fall under the jurisdiction of military courts, which Human Rights Watch opposes under any circumstances.
The use of military courts to try civilians violates international law, including the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt ratified in 1984. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has stated that civilians should never face military trial.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations body charged with interpreting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has stressed that “the conduct of criminal proceedings against children within the military justice system should be avoided.” Egypt ratified the convention in 1990, making it one of the earliest state parties to the convention.
“The referral of so many civilians to military courts is an attempt by Egyptian authorities to provide a judicial rubber stamp for their crackdown,” Houry said. “But these military trials – often involving hundreds of civilians at a time – are neither fair nor credible.”
SISI'S MILITARY COURTS LAW
On October 27, 2014 – three days after armed extremists killed dozens of soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula – al-Sisi, in the absence of a parliament, decreed Law 136 for the Securing and Protection of Public and Vital Facilities.
The law placed essentially all public property under military jurisdiction for two years and specifically included electricity stations, gas pipelines, oil wells, railroads, road networks, and bridges, in addition to similar state-owned property. To charge civilians under the law, military prosecutors filed charges such as blocking road and rail networks, burning electricity infrastructure or attacking government property, such as telephone exchanges.
On November 11, 2014, Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat issued a memo to prosecutors instructing them to review their files for cases that might fall under the new law, prepare memos about them, and refer them to military prosecutors “whenever requested.”
Article 204 of Egypt’s Constitution, approved by popular referendum in January 2014, under the interim government that followed Morsy’s removal, specifies a range of crimes for which civilians can face military trial, though it ostensibly limits such cases to assaults on military personnel or equipment, or crimes that involve military factories, funds, secrets, or documents.
The article is largely the same as one in the previous constitution, passed during Morsy’s administration, which also allowed military courts to try civilians, despite protests from activists and some politicians.
The wave of military prosecutions against civilians since October 2014 marks a return to the practice, which the authorities employed widely after Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Between January 28 and August 29, 2011, 11,879 civilians faced military trials, and at least 8,071 were convicted, according to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which governed Egypt during most of that period.
Under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the longtime president ousted in 2011, emergency law allowed him to refer civilians directly to military trial. Between 1992 and 1998, military courts tried more than 1,000 civilians in mass trials, most of them alleged members of al-Jihad or the Islamic Group, extremist Sunni Muslim organizations that were waging an antigovernment insurgency.
Such trials were rarer during the 2000s and mostly reserved for sensitive political cases, such as those against members of the Brotherhood leadership. Military trials of civilians virtually halted during Morsy’s one-year administration, which began in June 2012, though the practice remained legal.
Three cases documented by Human Rights Watch show how military trials under al-Sisi have relied solely on the word of National Security officers, some of whom are accused by defendants of using torture during their enforced disappearance to force them to confess.
Egypt: 7,400 Civilians Tried In Military Courts
Torture, Disappearances Used to Elicit Confessions
A list of civilians tried in military courts, provided by the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, an independent legal and human rights group, documents for the first time the extent to which al-Sisi’s administration has used the military justice system to expedite its harsh crackdown on opponents.
Most defendants were sentenced after mass trials that violate fundamental due process rights, and some courts relied on confessions extracted under torture, relatives of the defendants said.
“Apparently unsatisfied with tens of thousands already detained and speedy mass trials that discarded due process in the name of national security, al-Sisi essentially gave free rein to military prosecutors,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “He has handed back to the military judiciary the powerful role it enjoyed in the months after Egypt’s uprising, when the nation was governed by a council of generals.”
The list provided to Human Rights Watch documented 324 cases, identifying defendants by name, sex, home governorate, and case number, and in many cases by profession and age. The largest case involved 327 defendants.
The list did not describe the charges in each case. But a Human Rights Watch survey of about 50 Egyptian media reports since October 2014, describing the referrals of thousands of people for military trials, indicates that most of those charged in military courts were transferred there because the broad provisions of al-Sisi’s law essentially put all public property under military jurisdiction, not because they committed crimes involving the armed forces.
The media reports indicated that a large number were accused of participating in illegal or violent protests, as well as membership in or support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Since July 2013, when the military removed Mohamed Morsy, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former Brotherhood member, Egyptian judges have sentenced thousands of members of the group.
These military trials have swept up at least 86 children, as well as students, professors, and activists, including individuals who were forcibly disappeared and allegedly tortured. Military courts have handed down 21 death sentences since October 2014, though a lawyer with the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms said that none have yet been approved by the Supreme Military Court of Appeals.
In May 2015, six men were hanged following verdicts handed down by a military court in August 2014, despite evidence that some had been in detention at the time of their alleged crimes.
Human Rights Watch interviewed relatives of seven people, including four men sentenced to death and one child, who were all tried in military courts in the past year. Six told their families that agents of the Interior Ministry’s National Security branch tortured or beat them to elicit confessions, including four who were tortured with electric shocks. Five said they were forcibly disappeared by the authorities for weeks or months. In all but one case, their convictions were based in large part on the confessions, according to their relatives and case files.
In one case, following a mass trial of 27 defendants, a military court sentenced Seif al-Islam Osama, who was 15 when arrested, to three years in a juvenile detention facility for allegedly participating in an illegal protest, despite defense lawyers’ arguments that he was too young to face military trial and had not actually been a participant.
In another case, a high school student arrested in the street outside his school told his mother that National Security agents stripped him, walked on him, extinguished cigarettes on his skin, and gave him electric shocks on various parts of his body, including his genitals, to make him confess to belonging to a “terrorist cell” that planted explosives and burned electricity stations. A military court sentenced him to three years in prison.
Thousands of civilians were retroactively referred to military trials for crimes they allegedly committed before al-Sisi imposed the law. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of the civilians referred for military trial faced charges that stemmed from the violent unrest that broke out in mid-2013 after the military removed Morsy from power.
The list identified 1,468 defendants from Minya governorate – the most from any one governorate – where violent mobs attacked churches and Christian-owned homes and businesses following Morsy’s removal and the subsequent mass killing of Morsy’s supporters by security forces in August 2013.
The media reports reviewed by Human Rights Watch corroborated the retroactive referral of hundreds of Minya residents to military trials for participating in the 2013 violence.
Another military trial involves Sohaib Sa’ad, a 22-year-old man arrested on a Cairo street on June 1, 2015, as he walked with friends. The authorities forcibly disappeared Sa’ad for four weeks, during which time he alleged he was tortured. Sa’ad, who used to film protests and sell the footage to news media, had been charged in a prominent case targeting three journalists from Al Jazeera and was detained from January 2, 2014, until February 12, 2015, when he was released pending retrial.
On July 10, 2015, almost two weeks after he reappeared, the Defense Ministry published a video on YouTube announcing the arrest of Sa’ad and others in what it said was “one of the most dangerous terrorist cells belonging to a special operations unit of the terrorist Brotherhood organization.” The video showed Sa’ad and several others confessing their alleged roles in the group. The court hearing the Al Jazeera case sentenced Sa’ad and the other defendants to three years in August 2015, and on April 3, 2016, the military court hearing the terrorism case against Sa’ad and 27 other defendants postponed its verdict to April 24.
Such mass trials, in both Egypt’s regular and military judiciaries, have violated due process guarantees and failed to establish individual guilt. In 2014, a criminal court judge issued 220 death sentences against defendants accused in mass trials of participating in Minya’s 2013 violence. In February 2016, a military court mistakenly handed down a life sentence to a 3-year-old child following a mass trial against 116 protesters from Fayoum governorate, whose case was transferred to a military court under al-Sisi’s law.
Egypt’s military courts are administered by the Defense Ministry. The judges are serving military officers. Military court proceedings typically do not protect basic due process rights or satisfy the requirements of independence and impartiality of courts of law. Children can fall under the jurisdiction of military courts, which Human Rights Watch opposes under any circumstances.
The use of military courts to try civilians violates international law, including the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt ratified in 1984. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has stated that civilians should never face military trial.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations body charged with interpreting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has stressed that “the conduct of criminal proceedings against children within the military justice system should be avoided.” Egypt ratified the convention in 1990, making it one of the earliest state parties to the convention.
“The referral of so many civilians to military courts is an attempt by Egyptian authorities to provide a judicial rubber stamp for their crackdown,” Houry said. “But these military trials – often involving hundreds of civilians at a time – are neither fair nor credible.”
SISI'S MILITARY COURTS LAW
On October 27, 2014 – three days after armed extremists killed dozens of soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula – al-Sisi, in the absence of a parliament, decreed Law 136 for the Securing and Protection of Public and Vital Facilities.
The law placed essentially all public property under military jurisdiction for two years and specifically included electricity stations, gas pipelines, oil wells, railroads, road networks, and bridges, in addition to similar state-owned property. To charge civilians under the law, military prosecutors filed charges such as blocking road and rail networks, burning electricity infrastructure or attacking government property, such as telephone exchanges.
On November 11, 2014, Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat issued a memo to prosecutors instructing them to review their files for cases that might fall under the new law, prepare memos about them, and refer them to military prosecutors “whenever requested.”
Article 204 of Egypt’s Constitution, approved by popular referendum in January 2014, under the interim government that followed Morsy’s removal, specifies a range of crimes for which civilians can face military trial, though it ostensibly limits such cases to assaults on military personnel or equipment, or crimes that involve military factories, funds, secrets, or documents.
The article is largely the same as one in the previous constitution, passed during Morsy’s administration, which also allowed military courts to try civilians, despite protests from activists and some politicians.
The wave of military prosecutions against civilians since October 2014 marks a return to the practice, which the authorities employed widely after Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Between January 28 and August 29, 2011, 11,879 civilians faced military trials, and at least 8,071 were convicted, according to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which governed Egypt during most of that period.
Under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the longtime president ousted in 2011, emergency law allowed him to refer civilians directly to military trial. Between 1992 and 1998, military courts tried more than 1,000 civilians in mass trials, most of them alleged members of al-Jihad or the Islamic Group, extremist Sunni Muslim organizations that were waging an antigovernment insurgency.
Such trials were rarer during the 2000s and mostly reserved for sensitive political cases, such as those against members of the Brotherhood leadership. Military trials of civilians virtually halted during Morsy’s one-year administration, which began in June 2012, though the practice remained legal.
Three cases documented by Human Rights Watch show how military trials under al-Sisi have relied solely on the word of National Security officers, some of whom are accused by defendants of using torture during their enforced disappearance to force them to confess.
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