Statement of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim before State Security Prosecutors
July 27th 2000
This is not a case about Egyptians receiving foreign funding from
abroad, for our government is the largest recipient of grants, gifts
and aid from abroad. Our private sector is the second largest
recipient of such grants, aid and loans. At the tail end of this
list are the civil society organizations of which Ibn Khaldun Center
is one. These organizations total approximately 15,000, and receive
no more than 1% of private sector receipts and less than 0.1% of
what the Egyptian government receives from these foreign sources:
$30M, $300M and $3,000M respectively. The total Ibn Khaldun Center
received annually from those sources did not exceed $300,000 (about 1
million LE). It is therefore impossible that all this commotion
could be over those one million LE, which are spent on training and
employing thirty young people; additionally, 10% of it is paid to the
government in the form of taxes. All this is done with a degree of
transparency exceeding that of the State and the private sector.
We estimate the government of this country I love has probably spent
more on the investigation and prosecution of this case -- including
the costs of searching and guarding the premises of Ibn Khaldun
Center and imprisoning its staff -- in the past month than the Ibn
Khaldun Center's entire annual budget.
Furthermore, this case is not about uncovering a group of thieves or
embezzlers, whether of the European Union's money or that of any
other donor organization. These organizations have not and will not
ask Egyptian State Security to perform the role of auditing authority
for the European continent. In fact, these organizations entered
into contractual relationships with Ibn Khaldun Center and both
parties are bound by the provisions of the civil contracts, which
govern their financial relationship. Most importantly, Ibn Khaldun
Center did not rob an Egyptian bank, steal from its people, embezzle
from its government or smuggle money across its borders. Just the
opposite is true: Ibn Khaldun Center and Dr. Saadeddin Ibrahim help
bring a modest amount of funds in to the country and distribute the
majority of this amount as salaries and incentives to some of
Egypt's
sons and daughters, amounts that were deposited in Egyptian Banks and
also fed into the treasury of the Egyptian government through taxes.
If the State Security authority seeks to expand its scope of
specialization to include financial auditing services, then let it
begin its new responsibility with those who take loans from Egyptian
banks and do not repay, and with those who steal from the Egyptian
people and embezzle from state funds and go unpunished.
This case also cannot be about catching a group of dishonest youth.
Let us say that in a moment of greed or foolishness some staff
attempted to defraud Ibn Khaldun Center, or succumbed to planting
forged records of their efforts to register voters, out of fear of
state security investigators. If it is true that these things took
place, then it is Ibn Khaldun Center and its chairman, as well as its
academic and professional reputation that are the victims -- and not
the Egyptian people or the Europeans, nor certainly the security of
the Egyptian state.
If it is later established that some of these young staff did indeed
forge or cheat or betray – let us assume that any or all of that
is
true – I draw your attention to an article in Al Ashram newspaper
titled "Those Who Cheat Are Not One of Us", dated July 1st,
2000, the
same morning as the arrest of the Ibn Khaldun staff. In this article
the Minister of Education admitted that group cheating occurred in
schools in Port Said and Al Husaynya in Sharkiya. The article says
that high ranking school officials abused the code of conduct by
leaking exam questions for the high school final examinations in
Alexandria, and that a police sheriff in Cairo transferred his son
from a Nasr City school district to his office district so that he
could provide him with the exam answers; or the member of parliament
who transferred his son from Maadi to the distant New Valley, so he
would have time to replace his son's exam with a model answer
book
during the transportation of exams from the province to the capital.
Or listen to the outcry of Mr. Mahmoud Abu El Leil, Governor of Giza,
in Al Ahram El Araby magazine dated 15 July 2000: "Giza's
youth let
me down … in a project for youth in Giza we gave fresh graduates
shop
outlets to start small businesses. After they had paid small down
payments and promised they wouldn't sell or rent the shops to
anyone,
they broke their promises. Some rented the shops secretly, others
abused these shops by using them for illicit and immoral
activities."
Or, reading in October Magazine dated July 23rd 2000, Dr. Mahmoud
Ibrahim Soliman, Minister of Housing, spoke of another case: "In
the
Mubarak project for youth housing, apartments are distributed
according to eligibility criteria, but unfortunately some youth
applied using forged documents. This means that they were even
willing to steal from the needy. We discovered 3,000 improper cases
of forged applications, so naturally we took back the houses from
them because they already had alternative accommodations. Not a
single one of them filed a complaint, because they knew that they had
cheated and that they did not deserve this housing".
These are examples of three confessions of two Ministers and one
Governor in one month who fell victim to cases of cheating or forgery
from youth –youth who are similar to those who may have cheated
Ibn
Khaldun Center. Keep in mind that Ibn Khaldun Center doesn't
have
the resources of the Ministry of Education and Housing or of that of
the Governor of Giza to either detect or prevent cheating.
Those who prepared this case and tried to implicate the Center should
redirect their efforts to the serious crooks in this country, as they
have spread across Egypt from Port Said to the New Valley and from
Alexandria to Al Hussaynia, passing through Giza and the Mubarak
housing project. Even if some young people betrayed Ibn Khaldun
Center they are the deformed offspring of major swindlers like
Habbak, Azzam and many others who operate freely on Egyptian soil.
This case is not about some youth who may have broken faith with Ibn
Khaldun Center, and this case is not about "receiving
international
bribes" for the purpose of tarnishing Egypt's image or
reputation.
Beyond the naïveté of these accusations from a legal
standpoint, the
Ibn Khaldun Center and its researchers are a source of pride for
Egypt abroad. Read what professor James Manor, Director of the
Institute of Development Studies in Sussex and the coordinator of the
Global Project on Civil Society stated in Al Ahram El Araby magazine
on July 22nd, 2000, or what The Economist wrote while commenting on
Ibn Khaldun Center on the same date. As noted by the London and New
York Times (10 July 2000), Washington Post (16 July 2000) and other
world press, the current damage to Egypt's image abroad is coming
from those attacking Ibn Khaldun Center, and from those who
imprisoned a prominent sociologist whose work enhances Egypt and the
Arab World.
These sentiments have been echoed by distinguished intellectuals in
Egypt, among them Dr. Said El Naggar (Al Wafd 19/7/2000), Dr. Abdel
Monem Said (Al Ahram 11/7/2000), Dr. Ibrahim Dessouky Abaza (al Wafd
6/7/2000), and Dr. Medhat Khafaga (Al Wafd 14/7/2000). Their message
is that Egypt's reputation is tarnished when its security forces
announce to the world that no honest Egyptian could possibly be
working in the fields of human rights and democracy --- that all of
them are hired agents motivated by bribes and foreign funding.
Egypt's reputation is further tarnished when international media
from
Berlin to Paris and from London to New York report that Egyptian
authorities arrested a 61-year-old professor in the middle of the
night and put him behind bars like a dangerous criminal.
This same sorry arrest scenario was employed by security forces
against the Secretary General of the Egyptian Human Rights
Organization in December 1998. In that instance, Egypt's
reputation
was dragged through the mud in front of a distinguished audience
gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, where the imprisoned Hafez Abu
Saada was among those to be honored.
This case is not about giving national secrets to foreign entities,
though that is the broken record that Egyptian security forces never
tire of using. Similar fabrications were leveled against 102 public
figures in Egypt as early as January 22, 1953. Our security forces
may have upgraded their surveillance equipment and interrogation
techniques; however it is clear that they have not upgraded their
thinking over the past fifty years. They do not realize that
Egypt's
enemies today are not the same as those of the past. The foreign
entities that Ibn Khaldun Center is accused of working with are the
same organizations that supply the government with security
equipment, food and medicines. They are the organizations that we
have welcomed to help us expand economic partnerships and trade. And
the government of Egypt is engaged with some of these entities in
joint military training operations on a regular basis.
How could one private center be guilty of espionage for the same
foreign organizations that the State has opened up its land, sea and
sky to for military maneuvers? Do they not realize that we are in a
new century and a new millennium? No……..this case is not about
giving away our secrets, or tarnishing Egypt's image, or
accepting
foreign funding, or some youth who went astray… This is in the
end a
case about matters still unspoken.
Those matters still unspoken, which State Security cannot openly
interrogate, include the work of Ibn Khaldun Center along with some
of its sister civil society groups to ensure the integrity of
elections and reduce possibilities for election fraud. Our efforts in
this regard were modest in 1995 but resulted in monitoring 88 polling
stations and reporting on irregularities found. The reports issued by
the national monitoring committee we formed became evidence in
several administrative court cases, where judges eventually nullified
the results in 80 out of 88 electoral districts. The courts in other
words verified the results of our work. We believe that in order to
prevent this from happening again in the upcoming parliamentary
elections, a case has been contrived against us. If certain forces
were hoping to rig elections again in peace and quiet, they needed to
make it appear that the secretary general of the national monitoring
group was himself a forger, a foreign agent, and worse. And they have
succeeded already in a moral character assassination, even if no
charges are ever proven in court. This is part of what has been left
unsaid in this case.
"They plot, but Allah also plots, and Allah is the most powerful
plotter of all…" They did not anticipate that on the eighth day
of
this case against Ibn Khaldun Center, Egypt's Supreme
Constitutional
Court would issue its bombshell: invalidation of the sitting
parliament and its predecessor because the MP elections were not
monitored independently by the judiciary.
There is another matter which is left unspoken, and that has to do
with the Copts of Egypt. The Center has been addressing this issue
for the past five years, following an increase in violent sectarian
incidents in the country, from Sanbo to Kafr Demiana, to Ezbat el
Akhat to El Koshe. We drew attention to the problem, we warned of
potential damage, and we called for respecting the rights to full
citizenship of Egyptian Copts. Those rights include the right for
full participation in the political process, including access to the
legislature. This has not pleased the security forces, who still
repeat the broken record about foreign circles instigating all
problems inside the country.
What those forces failed to admit is that the ruling National
Democratic Party did not nominate one Copt for parliament in the 222
electoral districts throughout the country, either in 1990 or 1995
elections. They did not care to investigate the content of the
Egyptian press or education system to see what is said –or
unsaid—
about the Copts.
Things happening in this arena now can show us one of the real
reasons behind the vindictive and fabricated tactics of those
involved in this case. Today there is new openness about these issues
as a result of the efforts of the Ibn Khaldun Center; newspapers are
writing about the issue of Coptic nominees for the fall elections in
a way that never happened in 1990 or 1995. We at the Center are
pleased to see this happening, and we accept that now we are paying a
price for what was formerly left unsaid.
There is a third unspoken area, and that is related to women's
participation in public life. Ibn Khaldun Center helped to found the
Egyptian Organization for Women Voter's Rights (HODA) at a time
when
we saw that the percentage of women participating in politics was
decreasing in Egypt while rising everywhere else in the world. What
was originally unspoken has now been fully recognized through the
establishment of the National Council for Women at the beginning of
this year. Ms. Amina Shafik, the director of HODA, was appointed to
the select group of members.
We want to state for the record of this investigation, as well as to
the Prosecutor General, that the Ibn Khaldun Center works at the
forefront of both research and applied action. It is mainly our
applied actions that have provoked a firestorm of negative response.
These are predictable reactions from societal forces opposed to
change, open development and enlightenment. We never imagined that
reactionary fear of change would lead them to use a weapon of moral
mass destruction against the leaders of change, but they have done so
with Ibn Khaldun Center.
I have said what I have to say, and I ask God's mercy on me, on
them,
and on all Egyptians.
END
Thanks for your efforts in making Egypt more Democratic!
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