Banners bearing pictures of protester Amr al-Beheiry, sentenced last week by a military court to five years in prison, were held up in Tahrir Square on Friday. His family joined Tahrir protesters to demand their son's release.
Al-Beheiry was arrested last week when the army violently dispersed a sit-in in front of the People’s Assembly during the early hours of 26 February. Three days later, the Supreme Military Court sentenced him to five-years in prison for assaulting a public official on duty and for breaking curfew.
“All I want is a fair trial for my brother,” says Mohamed al-Beheiry, Amr’s brother.
Legally binding Human Rights Treaties state that civilians have the right to be tried in front of an ordinary judge rather than the exceptional judges used in military trials, which also lack other basic elements of a fair trial.
Mohamed says that in the five minutes that he was allowed to visit his brother in jail, he saw signs of abuse on him. Amr said he received bad treatment and that the conditions of his incarceration were “inhumane.”
“He had stitches on the forehead and dragging marks on his face. He was in a dazed state from the effect of the clubs that hit his head and he was in a very bad psychological condition because he was jailed unfairly,” says Mohamed.
Amr, a 33-year-old employee in a food company, had never participated in any protests before.
“I had a nervous breakdown when I knew he was sentenced to five years. My son is not a thief and he doesn't even take part in any political activities… he doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him,” says his mother Badreya Khalil.
Laila Soueif, human rights activist and university professor who witnessed the incident, says that once the military started trying to disperse protesters early Saturday morning, army officers ganged up on al-Beheiry and beat him severely. She said that they wanted to arrest him but because she insisted that she would not leave without him they let him go.
Soueif said that two young men volunteered to take the beaten protesters in their car and al-Beheiry, whose face was bleeding, got in their car with a relative of his, youth coalition member Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, and college professor and activist Takadom al-Khatib.
Soueif says that five minutes later al-Khatib called her to say everyone in the car had been arrested.
By Saturday, all the detained during the incident were released except for al-Beheiry, even though the army issued an apology for the violence and announced that everyone arrested would be released. Soueif submitted a testimony of the incident to the general prosecutor, denying allegations that al-Beheiry had a weapon.
Mohamed says that he learnt about his brother’s arrest from television and found him in Qubba Bridge police station. He says officers there told him that Amr was scheduled for a court session on March 12th, but then, to his shock, Amr received a sentence from a military court the next day.
“His trial took three minutes, with no lawyer and no witnesses, and he was sentenced to five years and sent to al-Khalifa prison,” says Mohamed.
Al-Beheiry’s case has received a lot of popular support from people demanding his release through Facebook campaigns and protests. Actors Khaled Abul Nagga, Asser Yassin and Basma posted a video on Youtube to raise awareness about his case and ask the military to release him.
Al-Beheiry’s family handed in a complaint to the military prosecution yesterday and are now appealing his sentence.
International rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned Beheiry's trial.
"Military courts have convicted dozens of civilians, all charged with criminal offenses, including possession of weapons, since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took control of Egypt on 11 February, 2011. Reports of military trials of civilians, in particular people accused of weapons offenses and other crimes, have surfaced in the past week," said a Human Rights Watch statement dated 3 March.
