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Exiled Egyptian sociologist sentenced to two years in jail for damaging Egypt's reputation
Mon. August 04, 2008 05:55 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) Egyptian sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim was sentenced to two years in jail in absentia by a Cairo court on Saturday on charges of damaging Egypt's reputation.
Ibrahim’s wife said her husband who spent months in prison in 2002 on similar charges, has been living abroad for more than a year for fear of arrest if he comes back to Egypt. He is now in Istanbul for a G8 conference on democracy in the Middle East.
Sources say the low-level Khalifa misdemeanours court gave Ibrahim the option of paying a surety of 10 000 Egyptian pounds to avoid imprisonment and appeal against the sentence. His defence team said he would take that option.
The case stemmed from a private prosecution by two lawyers who objected to remarks Ibrahim made about Egypt at a conference in the Qatari capital Doha, judicial sources said.
The charges said at the conference Ibrahim publicly suggested the Bush administration link its aid to Egypt with political reform and improvements in its human rights practices.
It is one of several suits filed against Ibrahim by politicians and others, some of them close to the authorities. Rights groups say the suits are a way for the government to intimidate Ibrahim without putting its name to the cases.
Ibrahim's wife Barbara said she knew of at least six similar suits which judges had thrown out in recent months, often on the grounds that the plaintiffs had no direct interest in the case.
"My assumption is that they have been trying to find a court that will finally get him," she told Reuters on Saturday.
Ibrahim has both Egyptian and US citizenship and the United States campaigned vigorously for his release in 2002. The case put some strain on relations between Egypt and Washington.-Reuters
News Category: Africa
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