Egypt judiciary corrupt, not independent: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Aly el-Kabbany, an author and journalist in London, about Amnesty International slamming a lengthy jail term handed down to the ousted Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, over the arrest and torture of protesters in 2012.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Kabbany, if according to the Human Rights Watch’s statement, Morsi’s trail was biased and full of flaws, is there anything that can be done for a re-trial to be held?

Kabbany: There is no hope for a re-trial and the re-trial will have the same effect because as the report said all these trials are politically motivated, controlled by the military and the police.

In this case actually, the main witness for the prosecutor was police officers and army officers, the people who were supposed to protect the protesters, not president Morsi and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So the whole trial was badly flawed and of course politically motivated and the report actually was surprised that Morsi was not given the best sentence and the best sentence was not given because the prosecution failed to prove that there was criminal offense committed by Morsi and the 12 other leaders according to the report.

But according to me actually they are afraid to give this penalty to Morsi for the death of few protesters in front of the presidential palace killed by the police forces and the presidential guard not by Morsi himself. He was not involved in that but they are scared that Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Mohamed Ibrahim, his Minister of Interior could face the same fate of killing more than 4,000 protesters - 1,000 in one day in the massacre of Rabba.

So if they are trying to commit that Morsi was guilty of killing protesters, so they committed a massacre, both Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim and they are the people who should stand trial for all the blood they committed and all the murder crimes they committed since the 3rd of July military coup.

The main crime also was for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to hijack an elected president and keep him in a secret base for more than three weeks in violation of the Egyptian law. It never happened in the history of Egypt that an elected president who was actually president Morsi was the first elected president in the history of Egypt but the military coup hijacked an elected president and put him in an unknown place for three weeks without any charge.

So that is a crime and a violation of the Egyptian law in its own in which the leader of the military coup and the president at the time, the head of the Constitutional Court should stand trial.

Press TV: Mr. Kabbany, the Muslim Brotherhood has said that this “decision”, this sentence could spark another revolution on the streets of Egypt. Is this something that the government would want? 

Kabbany: The government does not want and as you can see they are always delaying the ruling of these court cases for long time. They want to scare the Muslim Brotherhood, they want to scare their supporters without really having the ruling which can backfire on them but you cannot also postpone trials forever.

At a time we should come with a court ruling and as all observers noticed that of course the court ruling did not come with capital punishment and death penalty as the other judge who ruled death penalty for 537 accused in one court case after three days of hearing. So they do not want this to happen again and we do not want to give the capital punishment to the deposed president, hearing actually the public disorder especially after the same courts in Egypt cleared [former Egyptian dictator Hosni] Mubarak and all his gang of all charges.

So a corrupt president who corrupted the political, economical and social life in Egypt for more than 30 years and looted the wealth of the country with his gang was cleared of all charges and an elected president after 11 months has brought all of these court cases around of it.

So that proves actually that the judiciary system in Egypt is not independent. It is politically motivated but it is actually like a lot of observers are saying and Human Rights Watch today that the whole system is corrupt now and no one trusts in Egypt the court and the judiciary system these days.

AHK/HMV

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