Cairo: 4 February, 2021
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said today that it has been six years since its executive director, among other independent human rights defenders, was barred from traveling on 4 February 2016, when he learned at Cairo Airport while traveling abroad on a work trip that a travel ban order had been issued against him. The decision was based on the fabricated political case known as “Civil Society Case No. 173/2011”, which started ten years ago, without any summons, investigation, trial, or closure of the case file, a matter which sadly questions the role of the Egyptian judiciary in such political case.
Gamal Eid, human rights lawyer Gamal Eid and the director of ANHRI, was surprised by his travel ban while he was finishing his travel procedure to board a plane on a business trip abroad at dawn on 4 February 2016. Days later, he learned from press reports that his travel ban came against the backdrop of the case that was fabricated by the Military Council against independent human rights organizations in 2011 following the overthrow of the corrupt dictator Hosni Mubarak. The case was followed by a decision to seize the funds of Eid along with many independent human rights activists and organizations, despite the fact that he hadn’t been summoned or interrogated. The judiciary also hasn’t closed the case yet, although it is the same judiciary that ordered the acquittal of all the foreign defendants involved in the case in late 2018, in a sentence that is written as if it was a poem defending civil society and condemning fabrication and political retaliation against human rights organizations and defenders, while adding that those people refused to act in line with the hypocrites, as the ruling reads.
ANHRI’s head Gamal Eid, who is banned from traveling in such deplorable case, said: “We are deeply saddened by the state of the Egyptian judiciary and the silence over using it as a tool of political revenge against human rights defenders. Being banned from traveling for five years without investigation or trial is not the only mistake. There are many others, including: the detention renewal of innocent people without their presence, and the detainees exceeding the maximum pretrial detention limit prescribed by law, in addition to overlooking the crimes perpetrated by the National Security apparatus! All apparatuses in Egypt can be fixed in a short time except the judicial system; since it needs several years to be reformed. We are really sad and afraid for the fate of this country. ”
ANHRI urges whoever is keen on implementing the rule of law, the values of justice and the independence of the judiciary to work diligently and sincerely to stop the use of the judiciary for political revenge; since all judicial systems should be neutral and independent and should only defend the law and the constitution.
