Jailed Egyptian Activist Gains Wider Support

Barbara Ibrahim’s phone is ringing constantly, but these days it’s not with the death threats against her husband or the family that used to come as often as 10 times a night. These are calls of support.

Her husband, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, has become Egypt’s most prominent democracy activist, a stature acquired because the authorities have put the 63-year-old in prison--for seven years of hard labor.

His crimes: defaming Egypt and using a grant from the European Union to monitor parliamentary elections. He also spoke up for the rights of this nation’s Coptic Christian minority.

President Bush plans to notify Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that he will oppose any additional U.S. financial aid this year for Egypt because of the case, administration sources said privately. The decision won’t reduce the nearly $2 billion a year in aid the U.S. provides Egypt under the 1979 Camp David peace accords.

While declining to publicly connect the issue of aid with the Ibrahim case, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Thursday that the U.S. government “has expressed its deep concerns about this particular case” to Egyptian officials and that “at this time we don’t contemplate additional funds beyond the Camp David commitments.”

Although the Bush administration’s decision does not cut existing aid, the gesture--Washington’s first in this case--was taken by many here as a sign that momentum is building to help win freedom for the activist, who has both U.S. and Egyptian citizenship.

Calls From Media

On Thursday, Barbara Ibrahim asked a radio interviewer for 25 minutes to compose herself and collect her thoughts. “I don’t want to make things worse,” she said.

It’s hard to imagine that she could. Her husband, who has a neurological disorder, sits in Tora prison and faces the prospect of spending what could be his final years behind bars. Egypt says the case is not political, that Saad Eddin Ibrahim placed himself above the law and was convicted after a trial. (The case was tried in a state security court, which restricts the grounds he can cite in his expected appeal.) Officials said they will not be pressured to release him.

“Egypt does not accept pressure and will not bow to pressure and everyone knows that,” Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Thursday.

Case Has Wider Effect

The effect of the case extends beyond the activist’s fate: The goal of Mubarak’s authoritarian regime may have been to lock up one man, but the result has been to send a chill through the human rights community here.

“How can you ask me to comment on this?” asked one of Cairo’s most active human rights leaders. “As you can understand, this is a very, very sensitive situation and it’s difficult for people in my position to say much.”

In fact, Ibrahim’s legal case is an example of the very problems in Egypt that the imprisoned activist is fighting to correct.

Barbara Ibrahim, who was born and raised in the Midwest and met her future husband at DePauw University in Indiana, was in the courtroom July 29 at what was expected to be a routine hearing in the retrial of her husband and other defendants. Instead, the judge walked in and simply read the verdicts. The last defense attorney had only just spoken, and Ibrahim had not been given a chance to submit his written statement, which the judge had said would be allowed.

He was dragged off to prison, and Barbara Ibrahim told reporters: “The rule of law died today in Egypt.”

But with Washington’s decision, and the growing interest in her husband’s cause, she’s feeling a bit better now.

“I have no deep resentment of the place but a sort of bewilderment of who is behind it,” said Barbara Ibrahim, who has lived in Egypt since 1975 and works as the regional director for the National Population Council. “It doesn’t add up around any logic other than keeping a society off balance--to serve the purpose of general intimidation so that no one feels safe.”

Egypt had lobbied Washington for an additional $130 million this year after Congress voted to give Israel $200 million in anti-terrorism funds as part of a $5-billion spending bill. However, the new aid for Israel is now on hold after Bush said this week that he will not sign the bill. Theoretically, Congress can restore the funding to Israel in another bill.

The European Union and human rights groups worldwide had long condemned Egypt for its conduct in the Ibrahim case, but the criticism of the nation’s human rights record is much broader. Egypt has been accused of using emergency power not only to stamp out Islamic extremists but also to silence all dissenting voices in civil society.

Until the decision on aid, the U.S. had remained largely silent concerning such charges against Egypt, which it considers to be a crucial player in regional stability and the post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism.

“It’s a signal, and the Egyptians will have to read a strong message into it that [human rights violations] do cost,” said a senior Bush administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This case is important.”

Ibrahim was a professor of sociology at American University in Cairo and served as the director of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Social Development Studies. In May 2001 he was convicted on charges that stemmed largely from his work monitoring elections and documenting the status of Coptic Christians in Egypt. The court also convicted 27 other employees of the center for aiding and abetting Ibrahim in the alleged activities, though not all received prison time.

The convictions were overturned by an appeals court and a new trial was ordered.

At his first trial, the court refused to allow Ibrahim and his defense team to see the evidence the prosecution claimed to have. The three-judge panel convicted him after 90 minutes of deliberations.

Barbara Ibrahim was shocked at her husband’s imprisonment, but not entirely surprised: For many years, there had been a drumbeat against him.

The vitriol began in 1994 when he played host to a meeting on minorities in the Arab world and discussed the issue of the Copts, a religious denomination to which he doesn’t belong.

That led to widespread attacks against him in the government-controlled media. Then he was castigated publicly for talking with Israeli peace groups that opposed the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

A Slew of Death Threats

But the death threats didn’t start until February 2000. Night after night, men would call, saying they were Islamic militants and would kill the whole family because of Ibrahim’s support for the Copts. The harassers stopped as soon as the Ibrahims installed “caller ID,” making Barbara wonder how the culprits knew about the move--and exactly who was behind the calls.

Then in May 2000, an employee of his center called to say the police had broken in at night.

“I remember, I was in bed, and Saad said [on the telephone], ‘Well, I don’t have anything to hide. Maybe it’s a good thing.’ ”

One month later, their house was surrounded by armed troopers and he was taken away at gunpoint.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.