Habib Nassar

On Jan. 24, human rights activist and accomplished poet Shaimaa al-Sabbagh died in the arms of a friend and a fellow protester. She sustained birdshot wounds fired by masked riot police to her head and back while peacefully marching to commemorate those killed in the 2011 Revolution. 

Sabbagh’s last moments were captured by a nearby photographer and became an incriminating symbol of Egypt’s return to military rule. To date, no one has been held accountable for this heinous crime. Instead, Azza Soliman, a prominent public interest lawyer and a key witness to the lethal shooting, is being prosecuted on a baseless charge of participating in an unlawful protest. (Soliman is also co-founder of the Cairo-based Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance and the 2015 International Fellow at the Global Network for Public Interest Law.)

The incident took place while Soliman was having lunch at a nearby restaurant. She voluntarily reported what she saw to the public prosecutor’s office, which then, absurdly, brought criminal charges against her under Egypt’s infamous “Anti-Protest Law.” The next court hearing for Soliman took place on May 9, when Soliman and 16 others faced charges under Egypt’s Anti-Protest law. 

Despite the protections to freedom of assembly enshrined in Egypt’s new constitution, the Anti-Protest Law is the basis for a vast number of politically motivated judicial proceedings that have attempted to suppress political dissent and obstruct access to justice. The asinine trial of Soliman is a testament to this breakdown. Rather than prosecuting those responsible for Sabbagh’s killing, they are being shielded from accountability. Unfortunately, Soliman is just one example of the countless voices that have been silenced through judicial harassment. 

It was not meant to be this way. When 2 million Egyptians occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011, repeating three central demands, “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice,” there was palpable hope among the protesters that a new, progressive political era would be ushered in. Four years later, basic demands remain unmet, and the current regime, led by Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, is rapidly annihilating any progress made since the revolution. Military and police impunity, combined with systematic retaliation against political activists, is once again the norm. 

The mass killing of supporters of President Mohammad Morsi in 2013, estimated at 1,150 people, was a horrific indication of this trend. According to a Human Rights Watch report, “All According to Plan,” the “Egyptian police and army methodically opened fire on crowds of demonstrators opposed to the military’s ouster of President Morsi.” The authorities’ failure to hold police or army officers accountable for these crimes is a clear testament to the disintegration of the rule of law and a blow to the country’s democratic aspirations. 

The government’s instrumentalization of the law and courts to secure state control is threatening its future. Legal and institutional reforms – unwieldy as they can be – are but the first elements in a transition toward a rights-respecting government. Rather than bravely endure the pain of transition, Egypt’s current government seems to have taken the cowardly route – silencing dissenters and imprisoning its erstwhile future leaders.

Yara Sallam, a prominent Egyptian feminist and a human rights defender, was sentenced to three years in prison for participating in a political march. Alaa Abdel Fattah, a blogger, a political activist and a youth leader in the 2011 revolution, who continued to speak out against Sisi’s regime after the revolution, is serving a five-year sentence. And Ahmed Maher, a co-founder of the April 6 movement and an outspoken participant in the revolution, was sentenced to three years in prison for protesting. 

It is clear that the Egyptian government has failed to secure the rights of its citizens, guarantee the independence of its judiciary, and protect its flourishing civil society. As Azza Soliman and other human rights defenders fight for their freedom in courts, Egypt’s ongoing struggle to obtain “bread, freedom and social justice” hangs in the balance. If the likes of Sabbagh and Soliman are muted, who will help blaze the path toward human rights protection and equal access to justice? Egypt’s human rights defenders are perhaps the most visible victims of this failure, but its most disastrous casualties are justice and the rule of law. 

Soliman’s trial must not be just another demonstration of the lack of government accountability. The charges must be dropped and the light turned on the real perpetrators: Those with their finger on the trigger and those who have stood in the way of genuine accountability.