Mubarak & sons face the wrath of the nation
Robert Fisk: Once untouchable, the old despot and his sons
faced the wrath of the nation they had terrorised
This was a moment when a country proved not only that its
revolution was real, but that its victims were real
Thursday, 4 August
Just when the Arab dictators desperately need to drink the
secure, cool waters of an Arab summer, along came the
Egyptians yesterday to poison the well. Deep into its
depths, those dictators could see a flickering enmeshed
face, fragile, fingers playing over its nose and mouth,
the arm of a man on a stretcher raised to prevent the
light getting too close but - for just a few brief moments
- with the same old arrogant eyes. Then the heavy black
mike appeared in the man's left hand. "I am here, your
honour," said a chillingly strong voice. "I have not
committed any such crimes."
Yes, the Egyptians really did put their wretched, ancient
dictator on trial yesterday, along with his effete, sullen
sons - both dressed in white as if heading for yet another
summer tennis party, an illusion broken only by the green
Koran under Alaa Mubarak's arm. An encouragement to his
dessicated, 83-year-old father, Hosni? Or an insult to the
dead?
The lawyers screamed their clients' pain; of torture, of
snipers, of the murder of
January-February uprising, of the brutality of the
security forces, of corruption on a Mafia scale. And to
whom else did these terrible charges apply? We thought
about
capital of
And across the vast, arid wastelands of the Arab despots,
the government televisions continued to show game shows
and cooking classes and domestic dramas and friendly
crowds, all of whom loved their presidents and kings and
potentates, who could never - could they? - be accused of
these awful crimes. Outside
coverage of the trial was broadcast by post-revolutionary
television.
"Are you Mohamed Hosni Sayed Mubarak?" asked Judge Ahmed
Refaat. Or Bachar al-Assad? Or Muammar Gaddafi? Or His
Majesty King Hamad? Or even His Highness King Abdullah,
Guardian of the Three Holy Places in a place called Saudi
For history - Arab history and western history and world
history - will place the scenes in the Egyptian Police
Academy yesterday in whole chapters, footnoted and
referenced, the moment when a country proved not only that
its revolution was real, but that its victims were real,
its dictators' corruption detailed down to the last
Egyptian pound and the last fake company title, its
people's suffering forensically described.
Despite its flaws, this was not summary justice, the kind
so beloved of the Assad family and the Gaddafi family or,
indeed, the Mubarak family. The Caliph had been brought
low - and the "Arab Spring" (ever a dodgy item right now,
with the butchery in
war) revived. Even when the helicopter bringing the old
boy to justice appeared in the pale, hot skies over the
desert, we shook our heads for just a moment. All true.
Can the infection yet be stopped, the poisoned waters
cleansed? The Egyptians didn't think so. If this was a
"bon-bon", a toffee or two to humour the masses from
trial all along to the yawning scepticism of the Arab
world - it promised by close of play to be a much more
serious affair. Defence and prosecuting lawyers shrieked
their demands, Mubarak's men to draw out the trial for
weeks, months, years, for thousands more pages of evidence
(5,000 against Mubarak alone), for subpoenas of all the
other men around the sundered president.
The names of all kinds of intriguing personalities in the
state security apparatus, the "Security Directorate" of
Ali-Shadli and Ali Magi and Maher Mohamed and Mustafa
Tawfiq and Brigadier Reza Masir, along with generals
Hassan Hassan and Fouad Tawfiq and Yahyia al-Iraqi,
Abdul-Aziz
Hani Neguid and Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Attallah, Colonel
Ayman al-Saidi - crept into the proceedings, all innocent
to a man of course, but hitherto part of the secret state
whose work was always anonymous, institutions which lived
in gentle darkness.
And then the lawyers for "civil rights claimants" - the
lawyers for the families of the dead and wounded - shouted
out the names of the victims. They walked and were shot
down again in the streets of
Mubarak's thugs took aim at them. There were also, I have
to say, some dark moments.
For outside the court, minutes before the start of
proceedings, I found lawyers like Mamdouh al-Taf, who said
that he had been cleared to represent civil victims by the
Ministry of Justice but who had seen with his own eyes, he
said, how his name on the court list had just been deleted
by the Ministry of Interior.
There was the father of Hossam Fathi Mohamed Ibrahim,
"martyr at
younger, in a red pullover in the picture his father held
in his hand. "Why can't he be represented by his lawyer in
this court?" he asked me. No wonder the first questions
shouted at Judge Refaat came from the men and women
representing the civilian dead and wounded. "Why are there
more lawyers representing the defendants in this court
than there are representing the victims?" a female lawyer
demanded to know. Good point.
Poor old ex-interior minister Habib al-Adli, blue-suited
and ignored by Gamal and Alaa Mubarak - who sometimes
appeared to be deliberately standing in the way of the
Egyptian cameras so that their father was censored from
the frame - hovered on his side of the cage to receive yet
more charges of corruption and violence. He has already
received a sentence of 12 years and, in his drab blue
uniform - a contrast to the virginal white of the Mubaraks
(Hosni kept clutching a white sheet around his throat) -
appeared a pathetic figure behind the iron bars and wire
mesh of the court prison cage. Long ago, I asked him for
an interview to discuss his business affairs - and was
told I would be arrested if I asked again.
"I deny everything," declared Alaa. "I deny all the
charges," announced Gamal. There was even a demand to
subpoena Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the military ruler
of present-day
Now this was surely taking things too far. From
and
there was silence. And, strange to say, not a word from
Washington, whose old chum Hosni now faces (in theory) a
death sentence. Perhaps Foggy Bottom also has its poisoned
wells.
The accused...
1. Hosni Mubarak
The former president is accused of conspiring in the
premeditated murder and the attempted murder of
protesters. Accused of corruption in accepting gifts to
facilitate a land deal, and in relation to a natural-gas
export deal.
2. Gamal Mubarak
A senior party figure with an eye on the presidency, Gamal
is charged along with his father with land-deal
corruption. It is claimed they accepted five villas worth
$7m from a businessman and in return sweetened a
real-estate deal in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
3. Alaa Mubarak
Better liked by the public and said to have attempted to
moderate his brother Gamal's instincts, Alaa is also
included in the corruption charge.
4. Habib al-Adly
Hosni Mubarak's security chief and former interior
minister, he is also included in the accusations of murder
and attempted murder during the Egyptian uprising.
Six other senior policeman face the same charges.
___________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment