By Nour Bakr
The sentencing of 529 alleged Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters to death this week provoked almost universal outrage at the large-scale, and procedurally inept manner through which it was applied. Whilst many argue the sentence is likely to be overturned, and that consequently reactions are equally overblown, this misses the point.
Since Morsi’s ouster last year, Egypt’s interim government essentially declared a War on Terror with the Muslim Brotherhood as its main target. This clearly politicised agenda culminated in the cabinet officially designating the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organisation, even before it had applied a similar tag to Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, who have publicly claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks since the coup. Egypt’s own state media quickly took up the mantle in adopting the label in reference to the Brotherhood, despite the government providing no evidence publicly for the designation, nor seeking a legal basis for it.
Even if we accept the claim, which seems plausible at this stage, that the absurd sentencing laid down will be overturned with pressure from Egypt’s interim government, this does not absolve them of culpability. Nor does it mean the main concern for Egypt is damage to its reputation internationally, as co-founder of an Egyptian opposition party argued in a recent piece for Al-Monitor. What about a state apparatus actively generating the feverishly anti-Ikhwan atmosphere; painting them as terrorists whose rights have been compromised, the logical extension of which is the abandonment of due process or human rights in dealing with them?
Last November 21 girls, including 7 minors, were handed 11 year sentences for “holding a peaceful protest supporting the ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi”. The court’s official charges included “illegal assembly, blocking roads, destroying public property and possessing weapons”, which even if true did not warrant the scale of sentencing passed down. Whilst this ruling preceded the Cabinet’s designation of the Brotherhood as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, the group’s activities had already been banned by an Egyptian court, and its assets seized. Again , the government had set the tone with Egypt’s official State Information Services reporting the bloody clearing of Raba’a square, with the headline “Egypt clashes leave 43 security personnel killed”, posting items of the “violence of Muslim Brotherhood”, and videos of the alleged ‘foreign terrorist elements’ within some of the anti-coup sit ins. Thus when in July, the Minister of Social Solidarity said that the government was waiting on the ruling of Egypt’s judiciary to take the suitable decision on the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is difficult to imagine a court under such high profile pressure, and overwhelming consensus from government, opposition, and the media, concluding anything other than the government’s official position.
Consider in contrast the 10 year sentences given to the two policemen recently convicted for the death of Khaled Said. This incoherent, fleeting glimpse of justice indicates how due process in Egypt has become a political agenda, selectively applied. And yet the punishment still did not fit the crime. Of course there was no campaign by Egypt’s powerful state media to have these men prosecuted or their rights suspended despite the interim government’s championing of Egypt’s ‘revolution’, of which the brutal killing of Khaled Said was a key catalyst. The power of the Egyptian state and its various organs should not be underestimated in their ability to pressure a supposedly independent judiciary. The “national mood” is still a powerful motivator in Egyptian politics, and the State has snatched back the ability to exclusively define it since the heady days of the initial uprising.
The regime’s political agenda has been clear in its uncompromising position towards not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but virtually any Egyptians whose position is not one of unwavering support for the status quo. Both critics of the coup and those who have criticised the government for other actions have been jailed under the current regime, and this would not be possible without the deeply authoritarian political environment cultivated by successive regimes, setting an agenda which individual judges are pursuing to their logical extreme. The ferocity with which the Muslim Brotherhood have been pursued and virtually eradicated as an organisation has represented not only a bloody acceleration in this government’s agenda, but that of Mubarak. As recently as 2007, Hosni Mubarak had publicly labelled the Brotherhood, for the first time in the movement’s history, as a “direct threat to Egyptian national security”, giving both Egypt’s judiciary and security forces the freedom to repress the regime’s core opposition by any means necessary.
Even if it is true that neither Sisi, nor any other government figure played a direct role in the absurd sentencing of 529 Egyptians to death this week, the War on Terror they have so virulently championed has opened the floodgates for individual judges to pursue the government’s agenda at will; charging anyone who represents a threat to the status quo, from activists to journalists.
Of course Egypt’s politicised judiciary is not a recent phenomenon, nor was it any less so under former President Morsi whose appointed Prosecutor General displayed a familiar political agenda in pursuing prominent critics of the government. However the sheer scale of the sentences handed out under the current regime to those affiliated with either the Brothrhood or the anti-coup movement, whether eventually rescinded or not, is symbolic of the deeply polarised atmosphere generated by the regime and its supporters which has virtually handed a carte blanche to Egypt’s corrupt judges.
It is far easier for the government to allow judges independence, then step in once outrage spreads following a controversial court ruling, rather than enticing the kind of opposition Morsi elicited when he attempted to take control of the judiciary for a set period. This has also allowed the regime to ensure Egypt’s judges remain overwhelmingly in line with the state’s political agenda in spite of their supposed independence.
Nour Bakr is a freelance commentator on Middle East politics. He is currently a Masters student in Middle East Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
