Terror as vengeance

Human rights groups say a general atmosphere of suppression and injustice is breeding ground for a new wave of terrorism, reports Gihan Shahine

     It may have not been coincidence that Saturday's twin downtown Cairo terror attacks occurred only a day after police sources revealed that 40-year-old Mohamed Youssef had died in custody. Youssef was the cousin of Ashraf Said, who has been identified by police as a prime suspect in the 7 April Al-Azhar terror attack that killed three tourists. The police neglected to explain how Youssef had died; they merely sent his body to his family for burial.

     Youssef's two brothers remain in custody, supposedly being interrogated -- as Youssef had been -- for any information they may have had about the attacks. In fact, human right groups say police rounded up dozens of the suspects' family members following the Al-Azhar attacks, detaining them without charges, and subjecting them to torture as a routine part of the interrogation process.

      Hafez Abu Seada, the secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), told Al-Ahram Weekly that Ihab Youssri Yassin -- the perpetrator of Saturday's downtown bombing, and one of those wanted for his involvement in the Al-Azhar attack -- had at least 20 family members in detention following the incident at Al-Azhar. Had the police caught up with him, Abu Seada said, Yassin knew he would have likely ended up the way Youssef did.

     Instead, on Saturday afternoon, a desperate Yassin blew himself up as he leapt off a bridge while being chased by the police. Less than two hours later, his fully veiled sister Negat, and his fiancée, Iman Khamis, opened fire on a tourist bus. The two attacks injured 10 people in total, including four tourists, and left the three perpetrators dead.

Shortly after the attacks, two Islamist groups claimed responsibility for the incidents. In one statement, a group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Martyrs' Brigade said the attacks were in revenge for the deaths (at the hands of the police) of those who carried out last October's Sinai bombings, and for the subsequent arrests of hundreds of people. Human rights groups say police detained some 2,500 men from the city of Arish after the three simultaneous bombings killed at least 34 people at Sinai tourist resorts popular with Israelis.

     Although the veracity of these statements remained unknown, there was a near consensus among human rights activists that the attacks did represent a predictable backlash to a build- up of repression and injustice perpetuated by Egypt's 24-year-old state of emergency. "Political suppression is breeding a new wave of terrorism," warned Abu Seada. "The attacks were obviously committed out of hatred for a repressive regime. Egypt's state of emergency only wreaks havoc, and creates small cells of despotic-minded citizens who want to take revenge for themselves by inflicting social instability."

     Samah Abu Shitta's story would appear to corraborate Abu Seada's claims. After her husband was detained together with another 11 members of her family in Arish, Abu Shitta vowed -- in front of an NGO gathering -- that women whose husbands, brothers and sons have been "held hostage" by police would "resist until our men are set free, or we die". Rather than seek vengeance, however, the women of Arish have hitherto opted for sustained peaceful protest. And while Abu Shitta's husband has been released, human rights groups say some 2000 Arish residents are still in detention.

     The government has traditionally dismissed calls for the abolition of the emergency state by arguing that the law was necessary to combat terrorism and drug trafficking. But according to human rights activists such as Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights, "these attacks are living proof of how the laws have actually failed to curb terrorism."

     Combating extremism, Hassan said, required "a real ideological confrontation on Al-Azhar's part, while religious scholars there have actually stopped short at denouncing terrorism as being contradictory to the teachings of Islam."

     By allowing arbitrary detentions and police torture, Abu Seada said, "the emergency law has turned innocent detainees into potential terrorists seeking vengeance for their fractured sense of dignity."

According to Hassan, who is also member of the state-backed National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), the council has received notice of at least 57 cases of prisoners dying in detention in the year 2004. "Those are only the cases that came to the council's attention," Hassan said. The actual figure, in his view, may be at least double that.

     The council's first annual report confirmed at least nine of those cases, while corroborating widespread claims that torture was nearly "a standard practice" during questioning in both Egyptian police stations and the State Security Investigation (SSI) office. Suspects, who are often held without charge, are reportedly given electric shocks, along with an array of other means of torture, said the NCHR.

     The report said that thousands of suspected Islamists have been in prison since the 1990s: some were detained without charges and never released; others remain in custody long after their sentences are through. Many of these suspects may ultimately be proven innocent, and released without compensation. Anyone who happens to be at the scene of a crime, the report said, could be arrested and tortured to obtain information as part of "a typical police investigative practice".

      Hassan said Saturday's attacks, "show that the public is completely desperate when it comes to feeling that the state will ever do them justice." Seeking extra-legal means to avenge themselves, he said, is the only way out. "This week's incidents are a sign of the deep scars engraved by police in the minds of ordinary citizens -- let alone terror attack suspects," Hassan said.

     Nader Fergany, the lead author of the third UN Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), expects a scenario of "impending disaster" in case such "a suppressive" situation persists. According to the AHDR, that scenario would include "chaotic upheaval" which "would well involve armed violence and human losses." The report says that Arab governments have failed "to provide citizens with a decent life, whether in terms of the basic requisites of daily life, human rights or both, which has created an atmosphere of repression, suffering and instability."

     The AHDR seems to have a point: the perpetrators of both the Al-Azhar and downtown attacks came from lower class families living in the impoverished informal areas of Shubra Al- Kheima.

     Fergany said "such a developmental failure, which manifests itself in poverty, unemployment and increasing inequality in the distribution of income and public wealth, has instigated a general sense of injustice and despair where youths have no hope for a better future. If people have access to peaceful and effective machinery to address injustices, they won't be boxed into a corner, with only violent protest behaviour as a way out, as was the case with the Saturday attacks."

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