Irwin article

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…. whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King wrote these words from Birmingham Jail in 1963, following his arrest for contravening a blanket injunction in Alabama against "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing".

More than 50 years after Luther King’s letter, grave threats to justice throughout the world continue to affect us – directly and indirectly. The aim of the Solicitors’ International Human Rights Group (SIHRG) is to “unite lawyers around the world for human rights.” One of the ways in which it fulfils that aim is by conducting missions around the world to observe, monitor and report human rights matters including trials and detention conditions.

In July 2014 I took part in one of those missions, together with another UK lawyer and in conjunction with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network. Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent Egyptian Human Rights activist, was arrested on 28 November 2013 and charged with offences under Egypt’s controversial protest law, which bans protests without prior approval from the authorities and has been widely condemned by human rights organisations. On 11 June, he and 24 others were sentenced in absentia to 15 years of prison, a fine of EGP 100,000 and five years’ probation. A further hearing had been listed for 22 July following an application for a re-trial. At the time of writing, he has been detained, without trial, for 175 days. Writing from the Torah compound, Alaa has said “every time I am jailed, a piece of me breaks, just like every time someone else is imprisoned, a piece of us breaks." The right to protest continues to fall victim to governments that seek to silence dissenting voices.

I am a solicitor specialising in public law, representing vulnerable adults and disabled children. Many of my cases involve consideration of whether my clients have been treated fairly by the state. The brief for this mission was to observe the trial of Alaa, which was to take place in the heavily fortified police compound at Torah in Cairo, and to report on its compliance with international human rights standards. I would be considering the concept of fairness in a very different context.

During two sweltering days in Cairo, we met with Alaa’s lawyer, members of Human Rights NGOs and members of the judiciary. We were told that employees of one NGO had also been arrested under the protest law in June 2014; their trial will not take place until 13 September. We discussed the death sentences given to 720 men and the 25-year jail terms handed down to 492 men en masse earlier this year, many of whom were also tried in absentia. After the optimism generated by the 2011 revolution, Egyptian human rights defenders are faced with a political and judicial system, which human rights organisations have consistently condemned for violating fundamental human rights.

This was demonstrated as we sat in Alaa’s lawyer’s office on the evening before the trial, when he received a call from a local journalist telling him that the hearing had been postponed because the court required ‘maintenance.’ The information proved to be correct, and the hearing was re-listed for 6 August. We now know that at that hearing, Alaa was required to stand in a glass cage, which restricted his ability to hear the proceedings. Alaa’s trial has been postponed once again until 10 September. He remains in detention.

Despite the postponement of the trial, we were able to report back with the information gathered from our meetings and to enable a press release to be filed expressing EMHRN’s deep concern about the postponement and the continued detention of Alaa. When asked whether they felt our presence and the international interest in the case was helpful, the Egyptian lawyers responded with a resounding ‘yes.’

Although I work in very different circumstances to the Egyptian lawyers I met, we are all concerned with the defence of justice. In this country we are faced with deep cuts to legal aid, attacks on access to judicial review and continued talk of the repeal of the Human Rights Act. The experience was a vigorous reminder of the ease with which fundamental rights and freedoms can be overlooked in the interests of security and of the absolute need to protect the independence of the judiciary.

King ended his letter with hope that “the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.” He was released from Birmingham jail after 8 days; his activism changed the world, albeit at terrible personal cost. It is vital that SIHRG and other organisations continue to undertake independent monitoring in Egypt and elsewhere so that lawyers can be made aware of threats to justice and to defend against them.

Anne-Marie Irwin August 2013