5 Oct 2007 | Comment, News and features
September is a resonant time in Egyptian politics. It was then, 26 years ago, that an angry Anwar al Sadat – Egypt’s then president – sent over 1,500 journalists, intellectuals and politicians from across the political spectrum to jail without trial, and fired a host of others from their jobs, for what he believed was their plotting to overthrow his regime. Less than a month later – 6 October, 1981- senior military officers assassinated Sadat during a military parade. His deputy, Hosni Mubarak, took office in a peaceful and constitutional process and has remained in power since then.
More than a quarter of a century later, the shadow of 1981 is not as distant as it should be with 11 journalists given custodial sentences for offending the president and his son.
Of the 11, five are chief editors, including the fiery and outspoken Ibrahim Eissa of Al Dostour, Wael el Ibrashi of Sawt Al Umma, Adel Hammouda of Al Fagr and Abdel Halim Qandil, the former editor of Al Karam. All were sentenced on 13 September to one year in prison, fined LE20,000 ($3,636) and granted bail for a further LE10,000 ($1,818) pending appeal. Their crime? ‘Libelling’ senior figures in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), including President Hosni Mubarak, his son Assistant Secretary-General Gamal Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. Less than two weeks later, on 24 September, Anwar al Hawari, editor of the opposition party mouthpiece Al Wafd, and two other journalists were sentenced to two years in jail for misquoting the justice minister.
The five editors were sentenced under Article 188 of the Egyptian Penal Code which stipulates that anyone who ‘publishes false news, statements or rumours likely to disturb public order’ can face a one-year prison sentence and a fine that does not exceed $3,636.
As the press community was absorbing the shockwaves triggered by these sentences, the state security prosecutor announced that Al Dostour’s Ibrahim Eissa will face yet another trial on 1 October on charges of publishing false information concerning Mubarak’s health and – therefore – undermining national security. A few days ahead of that trial, the government news agency MENA reported that Eissa was to face a state security emergency court, whose sentences are final and cannot be appealed. While outrage was the common sentiment amongst the vast majority of journalists who assembled at the Press Syndicate to discuss ways to respond to these developments, pro-government newspapers pursued their scathing attack on the independent press’s ‘insolence’ for daring to criticize the president and his son. On his part, the president was quoted as saying he is ‘all for a free press’ but that journalists should abide by ‘a code of ethics’.
What Mubarak actually meant was he is all for a free press as long as it does not refer to him, his family, and controversial issues such as the presidential succession, among a long list of ‘red lines’.
It is this kind of conditional freedom that governs every aspect of political life in this country. On the surface, Egypt appears to enjoy a level of democracy unmatched in other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya. We have 24 licensed political parties (including some opposition), independent and opposition newspapers, parliamentary and presidential elections, workers strikes and street demonstrations.
But since Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Egypt has lived under a strict Emergency Law which, over the years, cauterised the security apparatus and expanded its mandate beyond its executive role.
There are currently at least 16,000 political detainees in Egyptian prisons being held without trial, cases of police torture in prisons and police stations are common news, hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members – the largest parliamentary opposition bloc – have been detained and 40 of their leaders – including university professors and businessmen – are now being tried before a military court for charges of money laundering and terrorism. On 4 September, the authorities shut down a human rights organisation for receiving foreign funding without government approval. And on 1 July, an administrative court dismissed the appeals of 12 unlicensed parties seeking legal recognition. Last March, the authorities held a referendum on constitutional amendments that entrenched Mubarak’s ruling party’s grip on power and was tailored to exclude the largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, from legal political participation. The amendments also made legal to hold elections without independent judicial supervision.
It is in such a climate that Egyptian journalists operate. Both the penal code and the press law are rife with articles that jail journalists for expressing their views under vague phrases such as ‘undermining national security’ or ‘spreading false rumours’. So while the number of privately owned and independent newspapers increased significantly over the past three years, allowing for a freer press, custodial sentences for publishing offences rendered such freedom meaningless.
Before the government adopted a ‘reformist’ and ‘democratised’ discourse over the past three years –in response to US pressure at that time – press censorship was the norm and newspapers were shut down. Ibrahim Eissa’s Al Dostour had first published in the late 1990s and was shut down in 1998. The man himself was banned from writing for many years and all his attempts to publish other newspapers in Egypt failed. Similarly, the opposition Labour party’s mouthpiece Al Shaab was shut down in 2000 for its fearless anti-corruption campaigns and the party itself was frozen altogether.
When the authorities allowed Al Dostour’s comeback in 2005, among other private-owned newspapers, they weren’t prepared for what these papers were ready to publish. Thirsty for meaningful democracy and change, resentful of government-condoned (or sponsored) corruption and damaging economic and political policies, much of the private press became a main platform for dissent and a reflection of the public’s discontent. On the other side of the divide stood the state-owned or backed press which rapidly disengaged from the street and addressed the ruling elite instead. Reading these two types of newspapers eventually became an exercise in reading about two different Egypts.
The problem now is that the authorities seem convinced that the private press, especially Al Dostour, has more power than the state media machine in influencing public opinion. Otherwise, why would it drag its editor to court every few months in cases that always relate to the president? And why did the official news agency report plans to try him before an emergency court? The authorities later reversed that decision and referred him to a criminal court on 1 October under tight security measures, which adjourned the case to 24 October. Officially, Eissa’s crime is reporting on nation-wide rumours on the president’s health, or even death, in August. And in many ways what we’re witnessing is a crackdown on the independent press and an attempt to muzzle freedom of expression. This is why 18 independent newspapers have agreed not to publish on 7 October in protest.
But this isn’t solely about curbing freedom of expression. A quick glance at the bigger picture shows an insecure and aged regime battling for survival through a series of procedures that include silencing the press. If Eissa and his colleagues who face prison sentences end up in jail, they shouldn’t be viewed as only victims of a press massacre, but of a police state consolidating its position.
19 Jun 2007 | Comment
Lord knows, I’ve had my differences with Ken Livingstone, especially when it comes to the politics of the Middle East – but there’s one issue he’s got absolutely right. Last week, to the enormous surprise of much of London’s Jewish community, the mayor agreed with them – and came out against an academic boycott of Israel.
Unfortunately, his intervention came too late. The very next day, Britain’s University and College Union voted to promote the call for a boycott. Now, I was raised to be respectful of teachers and positively reverential towards academics. Which is why it pains me to say that this decision is almost laughably stupid. But it is. If a student had come up with it, he would find it daubed with a thick red line, from top to bottom.
First, it lacks all logical consistency. Let’s say you accept, as I do, that Israel is wrong to be occupying the territories it won in the Six Day war, whose 40th anniversary is being marked this week. Let’s say that that is your reason for boycotting Israel. Then why no boycott of China for its occupation of Tibet? Or of Russia for its brutal war against the Chechens? Or of Sudan, for its killing of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, a murderous persecution described by the US as genocide?
If it’s the ill-treatment of Palestinians in particular that concerns you, then why no boycott of Lebanon, whose army continues to pound the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, killing civilians daily? True, the Lebanese government is not a military occupier. But if occupation is the crime that warrants international ostracism, then why no boycott of American universities? After all, the US is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. So, for that matter, is Britain. Why do the good men and women of UCU not speak out, by boycotting, say, Oxford, Cambridge and London universities? Why do they not boycott themselves?
Maybe academic freedom is their chief concern. That would make sense, given that they’re academics. But if that was the issue, there would surely be boycotts of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few places where intellectual freedom remains a fond dream. (The awkward truth is that the freest place in the Middle East for an Arab scholar is Israel.) Yet the UCU sees no “moral implications,” to use the language of last week’s resolution, in institutional ties with Damascus, Cairo or Tehran. Only Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
For some reason, the activists pushing for this move believe Israelis should be placed in a unique category of untouchability. Never mind the 655,000 the US and Britain have, on one estimate, killed in Iraq. Never mind the two million displaced in Darfur. Never mind the closed, repressive societies of the Middle East. The Israelis are a people apart, one that must be shunned.
But let’s be charitable and forgive the boycotters their inconsistency. Surely any tactic, even an inconsistent one, is forgivable if it does some good. This, though, is where the combined geniuses of the UCU have really blundered. For a boycott will be hugely counter-productive.
For one thing, Israeli academics are disproportionately represented in Israel’s “peace camp.” The UCU will be boycotting the very people who have done most to draw the Israeli public’s attention to the folly of the occupation, to the very people working to bring an end to this desperate conflict. By their actions, the UCU will embolden the Israeli right who will be able to say, ‘Look, the world hates and isolates us: this is exactly why we have to be militarily strong.’
The second error is more subtle. One of the few things that might make Israel change course would be a shift in diaspora Jewish opinion: those campaigning for Palestinian rights and an end to the occupation need to win over Jewish allies. Yet no tactic is more likely to alienate Jews than a boycott. That’s because the very word has deep and painful resonances for Jews: a boycott of Jewish business was one of the Nazis’ opening moves. No one is equating the current plan with that. But of all the tactics to have chosen, a boycott is the very dumbest one.
Advocates say there’s nothing to worry about, this will be a boycott of institutions, not individuals – a necessary move because no Israeli institution has ever taken a stand against the occupation. This, too, is numb-skulled. When do academic institutions ever take a collective stand against anything? Did Imperial College declare itself against the Iraq war? What was the British Museum’s view of UK policy in Northern Ireland? Of course there was no such thing. Institutions of learning don’t take a stand; individuals do.
Which is why it will be individuals who are ostracised by this action. When you boycott the Hebrew University, you’re not boycotting bricks and mortar but the men and women who teach there. The “institutional” talk is just a ruse designed to make this boycott more palatable. It will still end in the shunning of individuals.
And why? Simply because they are citizens of the wrong country, born with the wrong nationality. In 2003 the Linguistic Society of America declared itself against blacklisting scholars simply because of the actions of their governments. “Such boycotts violate the principle of free scientific interaction and cooperation, and they constitute arbitrary and selective applications of collective punishment.” They also amount to a pretty crass form or discrimination: you can’t come to this conference, because you’ve got the wrong colour passport.
Oh, but none of these arguments stopped the boycott of South Africa, say the pro-blacklisters. Except these situations are completely different. In South Africa, the majority of the people were denied a vote in the state in which they lived. Israelis and Palestinians are, by contrast, two peoples locked in a national conflict which will be resolved only when each has its own, secure state.
Ken Livingstone is right: to launch a boycott of Israel now would hurt, not help the search for the peace that might end this Middle East tragedy. And that, when all the posturing is put to one side, is all that should matter.
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21 May 2007 | Uncategorized
For four months at the end of 2005, I was given access to an extraordinary series of Foreign Office documents concerning the government’s strategy to tackle the threat of radical Islam at home and abroad. Literally dozens of emails, position papers and policy discussions came my way. It became clear that someone within Whitehall was deeply disturbed about the direction of British foreign policy, especially the strategy of engagement with groups and individuals on the Islamist extreme right. At one point I was receiving so many documents that I barely had time to read their contents, let alone judge whether there was a story in them.
But stories there were. The documents showed that senior figures in the Foreign Office believed that Britain’s policy in Iraq had led to an increase in radicalism among young Muslims, something the prime minister was denying at the time. I published the story in the Observer, where I was working as home affairs editor. But that was just the beginning.
The leaks provided me with a further news story for the Observer about plans to infiltrate extremist groups, and with features for the New Statesman on CIA rendition flights, diplomatic engagement with Egypt’s banned opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the panic that had engulfed the Foreign Office as a result of the disclosures. The documents also formed the basis of a Channel 4 documentary on the government’s troubled relationship with radical Islam and an accompanying pamphlet, When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, for the think tank Policy Exchange. The leaks were a journalistic goldmine. The revelations about the compact between the Foreign Office and radical Islam also went some way towards changing government policy towards the self-appointed representatives of Britain’s Muslim community, such as the Muslim Council of Britain.
It is difficult to imagine a series of documents that could have been more in the public interest to disclose. Decisions being made in the Foreign Office, with a direct effect on the British people, were taking place with little or no consultation. In particular, the Foreign Office had embarked on a detailed strategy of engagement with Islamists at home and abroad without reference to Parliament or even, it seemed, the prime minister himself.
owever, at the end of January 2006 my source was arrested under suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act. I have not heard from him since. The latest news is that he has been bailed until June, while investigations continue. By then, his life will have been held in suspension for 18 months: this at a time when Labour politicians complain that the ‘loans for peerages’ investigation has dragged on for a mere 12 months with no charges being brought.
If, and when, the case comes to trial it will provide a fascinating test of the secrecy laws. The documents, many of which have been collected in the Policy
Exchange pamphlet, are also available online. They provide a unique insight into government thinking on Islam between 2001 and 2006, a period that encompasses the suicide attacks on New York and the bombing of London. Reading through them again, it is difficult to imagine how national security can have been seriously compromised by the disclosures, which contributed considerably to the national debate on one of the most important issues of our time. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly is known to have been influenced by the disclosures in making her decision to seek new grassroots Muslim partners in the battle for hearts and minds. The Policy Exchange pamphlet has also helped inform the Conservative policy group on national and international security headed by Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee who also served as political director in the Foreign Office. It would be a delicious spectacle to see Kelly and Neville-Jones called as witnesses for the defence in any
trial that results from the Foreign Office leaks.
However, it is not difficult to see what motivated the arrest. The leaks were proving intensely embarrassing and coincided with a crackdown across Whitehall against unauthorised disclosures. This had been sparked by a separate leak of a memo said to outline plans by President George W Bush to bomb the Arabic television station Al Jazeera in April 2004. Following the publication of the claims in the Mirror, Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh and parliamentary researcher Leo O’Connor were charged under the Official Secrets Act.
In opposition, the Labour Party had fought the introduction of the 1989 Official Secrets Act, arguing that a ‘public interest’ defence should be inserted
into the legislation to give protection to genuine whistleblowers. During the parliamentary debate, Shadow Home Affairs spokesman Roy Hattersley said that the definition of harm to national security ‘is so wide and so weak that it is difficult to imagine any revelation which is followed by a prosecution not
resulting in a conviction’. Frank Dobson, who went on to serve in Tony Blair’s first cabinet, added: ‘Surely we as a Parliament have not sunk so low
that we want to introduce new laws to protect official wrongdoing.’
Once in power, the Labour Party had no such qualms. The Blair government has wielded the big stick of the Official Secrets Act with alarming regularity since it came to power. In August 1997, just months after winning an election on a promise of new openness and transparency in government, the new government faced a serious predicament in the person of David Shayler, an MI5 officer whose revelations about the intelligence service were published in the Mail on Sunday.
These included details of files kept on senior Labour politicians such as Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson and Harriet Harman. More seriously, Shayler later claimed that officers from Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, had participated in a plot to assassinate Colonel Qaddafi of Libya.
Despite the fact that Shayler’s claims referred to a period before Labour came to power, the new government pursued him relentlessly, requesting his
extradition from France, where he had set up home after leaving the security service. This pursuit extended to journalists who wrote about Shayler, and in
2000 I found myself in court after publishing an article in the Observer about the Libya plot, in which I said the newspaper had been given the names of the spies allegedly involved in the plot, but had been prevented from publishing them for legal reasons. (The officers’ names, David Watson and Richard Bartlett, have since entered the public domain, but they have never been prosecuted for their
alleged crimes.)
The Observer successfully fought an order to hand over all documents relating to my dealings with David Shayler and established an important precedent in media law that has made it more difficult to seize journalistic material. But it did not help David Shayler, who returned to Britain in 2000 to face trial. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in November 2002 for breaching the
Official Secrets Act, after more than five years of fighting for his claims to be investigated by the government.
David Shayler did not succeed in his own case, but his lawyers did establish an important precedent for future whistleblowers. In 2002, the House of Lords had decided that Shayler’s lawyers could not use a public interest defence. It also decided that the 1989 OSA was compatible with human rights legislation.
However, it did establish that in certain cases a ‘defence of necessity’ could be used if a whistleblower had acted because there was an imminent threat
to human life.
Less than six months later an opportunity arose to test the legislation. In March
2003 as the military preparations for war in Iraq gathered pace, a young woman in her late 20s walked into her boss’s office at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, and admitted to leaking a document of the highest possible classification of secrecy. Katharine Gun, a junior Mandarin Chinese translator, knew her career was at an end and that she could face a long prison sentence. But she believed the contents of an email she had received in the course of her work could stop the war. She believed her action could save lives.
The email, dated 31 January 2003, was from Frank Koza, head of regional targets at the National Security Agency in the United States, and asked for British help in spying on the United Nations, which was immersed in an intense debate about whether to authorise an attack on Iraq. Britain was arguing for a second UN resolution to specifically sanction the invasion, without which many thought the war would be illegal.
Key to any vote were the so called ‘swing’ nations, Chile, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, temporary members of the Security Council,
whose votes were essential in gaining legal cover for the war. Koza was demanding a ‘surge’ in spying activities to give the US an ‘edge’ in the negotiations.
He was desperate to know the voting intentions of the ‘swing six’, but also hinted that private information about individual diplomats should be amassed in case blackmail was necessary.
I ran the story about the leaked email in the Observer on 4 March 2003, three weeks before the outbreak of war. It had taken nearly a month from leaking the document to its appearance in the press and Gun was in a state of almost unbearable tension. She immediately owned up to being the source of the leak and was arrested by the police for a suspected breach of the Official Secrets Act. Gun believed that when the UN discovered what was going on, they
would never allow the war to go ahead. What she didn’t realise at the time Katharine Gun after charges against her were dropped, London February 2004
was that George W Bush had already decided on regime change in Baghdad, with or without the United Nations.
However, when the case finally came to trial in February 2004, the prosecution failed to present any evidence and the case was dropped before it had begun. At the time, speculation suggested that the government had decided to drop the case because it would have led to the publication of the attorney general’s legal advice on the legality of the war, which was initially equivocal. But the Crown Prosecution Service always said that the reason was far more banal: that it had become clear that it would be impossible to fight Gun’s defence that she had acted
to save lives.
Although it is impossible to know precisely why the government dropped the Gun case, it is probably fair to say that the ‘defence of necessity’, established by David Shayler, helped save Katharine Gun from prison. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the government has indicated its intention to close down the defence in future cases. Last July, The Times reported the intention of the new Home Secretary, John Reid, to remove the necessity defence and suggested that he would present the necessary legislation in last autumn’s Queen’s Speech. This did not materialise, due to a lack of parliamentary time. But the Home Office has confirmed that it is keeping the OSA under review and will revisit the defence of
necessity as soon as it can.
Campaigners still believe an amendment to the 1989 Act is imminent. Julie-Ann Davies, who was arrested in connection with the Shayler case in 2000, has
spent the past seven years researching Britain’s secrecy laws and is currently studying for a PhD at Glasgow University. She said: ‘I have no doubt the government intends to act. Whenever a window of public interest opens up, they close it.’ Former senior BBC journalist Nick Jones is now chair of Reform the Official Secrets Act (Rosa), which campaigns for a public interest defence for whistleblowers in national security cases. He said the Al Jazeera trial marked an intensification in the drive for government secrecy: ‘There does seem to be a new push, triggered by the war on terror, to restrain journalists who want to write in this area. Meanwhile, all talk of protecting whistleblowers has disappeared in a puff of
smoke.’
The paradox is that in the present circumstances the more serious the disclosure, the more chance of running a successful defence. My source, for example, who could only be accused of leaking ‘confidential’ rather than ‘secret’ documents, would not have recourse to the necessity defence. He would have to fall back on a defence that said he had acted in the public interest, something of which Labour seems to have lost sight after ten long years in government.
Martin Bright is political editor of the New Statesman
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