Egyptian faces death penalty for crimes he did not commit, lawyers say

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/egypt-hany-amer-death-penalty-military-prison-azouli

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Lawyers fear an Egyptian prisoner will be executed in the coming days for crimes they say he could not have committed because they took place months after he had been “disappeared” into a secret military black site.

Hany Amer, a 35-year-old computer programmer, has been sentenced to death along with eight others by a military court for taking part in attacks on a police van and an army checkpoint in March 2014, and for being a leader of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (ABM), an extremist group that later pledged allegiance to Islamic State (Isis).

Among other allegations, military prosecutors said Amer and his co-defendants “agreed between each other on a hostile attack against one of the army’s personnel transportation vehicles while military personnel were inside it” and were arrested days later on 19 March.

Related: Egypt’s secret prison: ‘disappeared’ face torture in Azouli military jail

But Amer’s lawyers and family say that he was arrested on 16 December 2013, well before any of the attacks took place, and likely taken to Azouli, a secret military prison that was the subject of a Guardian investigation in June 2014.

In a message apparently smuggled from prison, Amer wrote that his conviction constituted “the highest degree of infidelity and tyranny … by accusing us of participating in incidents that took place while we were under arrest”.

Egypt’s military judicial authority repeatedly said no one was available to respond to the claims, while a spokesman for the defence ministry declined to comment. Egypt’s main mouthpiece, the State Information Service, said it was not authorised to respond on the army’s behalf.

In two messages seen by the Guardian, Amer’s family sent a telegram to prosecutors on 17 December, demanding to know his whereabouts, while his lead lawyer, Ahmed Helmy, sent a similar demand in January 2014. Neither message got a response.

But in February, prisoners from Azouli who were attending a separate trial told Helmy’s colleagues that Amer was one of up to 400 people being held outside of civilian oversight at the jail, which is inside the headquarters of Egypt’s second army, 62 miles (100km) north-east of Cairo.

Helmy said: “Seven people came from Azouli, so we used to ask them who they saw there, and we made a list of that. His name was on the list.”

Helmy believes that Amer and others were forced to confess under duress. Azouli survivors interviewed by the Guardian claim they were electrocuted, beaten, and hung naked from their wrists for hours to get them to give up information. Helmy says that some prisoners, including Amer, were repeatedly tortured until they made specific confessions.

“You can’t know if these people have committed these crimes or not,” Helmy told the Guardian last year. “Under the pressure of torture you can admit to anything. It’s clear that some people are admitting to things because of the torture.”

Egypt has faced a series of major jihadi attacks since the overthrow of the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, in June 2013. But Amer’s brother claims he was not involved and was likely targeted because the police had failed to arrest the real culprits and needed to find easy scapegoats. His brother believes Amer drew attention because he was a known supporter of Hazem Abu Ismail, a popular Salafi preacher jailed in the days after Morsi’s ousting.

Amer’s brother said: “The government is treating prisoners like my brother as a strategic reserve so that whenever there is a big terrorist attack and they can’t find the actual militants, they bring people like Hany from prison and charge them so that it doesn’t look like they actually failed.

“The charges from the military case were all from March – but my brother was in Azouli since December. Others were inside since November. But the problem is that there is nothing that proves they were in Azouli. The government always denied they were there. The only proof we have are the telegrams we sent before.

“I don’t know for certain if any of them were involved. But for sure Hany and several others were in Azouli – and they couldn’t have escaped just to do these crimes.”

Under the former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the Egyptian government has launched a crackdown on all forms of political and militant opposition that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say is “on a scale unprecedented in Egypt’s modern history”. At least 1,000 dissidents have been killed since Morsi’s overthrow, while security officials have told the Associated Press that at least 22,000 people have been arrested. According to rights groups, many of them have been subject to miscarriages of justice.

Only one man has been executed so far, but hundreds are appealing death sentences that were given en masse after trials that lasted less than an hour.

Spokesmen for the Egyptian government deny any judicial impropriety and have frequently praised “the independence, fairness, and transparency of Egypt’s judiciary”. They say the crackdown is justified as a legitimate response to jihadi attacks, which have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.