AYMAN NOUR CASE: THE POST-CONVICTION STAGE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 009545

SIPDIS

NSC STAFF FOR SINGH

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/27/2015
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM EG
SUBJECT: AYMAN NOUR CASE: THE POST-CONVICTION STAGE

REF: A. CAIRO 9467

B. CAIRO 9349

C. CAIRO 9053

D. CAIRO 8034

Classified by Charge d'Affaires Stuart E. Jones for reasons
1.4 (b) and (d).

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Summary
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1. (C) Reactions in the Egyptian media to the December 24
conviction and sentencing of opposition leader Ayman Nour on
criminal forgery charges have been low key, with a few
exceptions. The broader public reaction is more difficult to
gauge. Many appear to believe that the case against Nour was
brought for political reasons, but many of these same people
question Nour's own integrity. The civil society/democratic
advocacy community in Egypt has shown varying levels of
solidarity with Nour. Nour's defense team will appeal his
conviction, which might be heard by spring. Nour has ended
his hunger strike and resigned from the leadership of the
Ghad Party to prevent a rival faction expelled from the party
from maneuvering to seize control. The GOE has not yet
reacted to our (and European) criticism of the verdict, but
we hope that pragmatists will take our public words as a cue
that it is time for Egypt to find a dignified solution to
this problem. End summary.

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Robust Reactions from Abroad, Mixed at Home
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2. (C) The French Government, normally reluctant to comment
on specific human rights cases in Egypt, issued a statement
on December 26, confirming that Paris had been following the
Nour case, noting that further legal recourse was available,
and stressing that the rights of the defendant should be
fully respected. On December 27, the European Union issued a
statement which more closely resembled the USG reaction,
describing the Nour case as sending "negative signals about
democratic political reform in Egypt." (Note: Diplomats from
France, the U.K., EU Commission, and Norway joined poloff at
the courthouse for the final December 24 session of Nour's
trial. End note).


3. (C) Reactions in the Cairo media, both to the verdict and
to international criticism, have been generally muted. Most
of the pro-government press presented terse and factual
reports about the verdict, with only scant commentary in
several columns, generally stressing the "criminal" nature of
the Nour case, in spite of efforts to "politicize" it. The
pro-government press has so far either downplayed or
overlooked international criticism. Many independent papers
have ignored the story, although a few have played up
negative international reactions, with the new tabloid
"Al-Fagr" erroneously asserting that the cancellation of Vice
President Cheney's December 22 visit to Egypt was prompted by
U.S. objections to the anticipated guilty verdict.


4. (C) Most of our contacts acknowledge that Nour's
prosecution was politically motivated but many also believe
that Nour is corrupt. The Egyptian Organization for Human
Rights, Egypt's oldest and most prestigious human rights NGO,
urged Nour's immediate release on humanitarian/health
grounds. A number of prominent members of the "Kifaya"
(Enough) protest movement attended the trial's final stages
and joined the small but noisy demonstrations in front of the
courthouse. Ayat Aboul Fotouh, Director of Saad Eddin
Ibrahim (SEI)'s Ibn Khaldoun Center, described the Nour case
as a matter of political persecution and found it eerily
similar to the GOE's 2000-03 prosecution of SEI on charges of
embezzlement and "tarnishing Egypt's image abroad."


5. (C) The strongest reactions came from Nour's Ghad Party
itself. Anticipating the guilty verdict, the Ghad brought
their printed reaction to court on December 24. In a two
page pamphlet entitled "Convicting Ayman Nour is Politically
Motivated," the authors review the origins of the case, which
they trace to Nour's outspoken defiance of the ruling NDP's
January 2005 efforts to get opposition parties to defer
demands for constitutional reform, and the politicized
trajectory of the case thereafter. The pamphlet asserts
"...measures were taken against Nour simply because he
represents a real challenge to Mubarak and his son. The Ghad
Party was also targeted because for the first time in years a
civil party was acquiring membership, support, and sympathy
on a nationwide scale. This seemed to discredit the regime's
claims that democracy will only bring Islamic fanaticism to
power...." Significantly, the GOE has not interfered in the
small pro-Ayman Nour demonstrations the Ghad have been
holding around Cairo almost every day in the past week.

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Nour Breaks Hunger Strike, Steps Down From Party
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6. (C) Nour broke his hunger strike on December 25. Nour
had declared in court on December 12 that he was beginning a
hunger strike in protest of his case and the terms of his
imprisonment. Nour and his lawyers were particularly
incensed by the judge's decision on December 5 to remand him
to custody in advance of the verdict and because prison
officials had booked him in to jail as a "convict" rather
than a "defendant." By December 18, the hunger strike had
taken a serious toll on Nour, a diabetic who also suffers
from heart disease. Prison officials admitted him to the
infirmary, and even sent a chaplain to try to persuade him to
eat. Nour looked emaciated and exhausted in court on
December 24.


7. (C) Wael Nowara (protect),Secretary-General of the Ghad
Party, confirmed to poloff on December 27 that Nour had
resigned from the post of party president and appointed party
Vice President Nagi Ghatrifi, a retired Egyptian Ambassador
to the UN in Geneva, as acting president, in accordance with
party by-laws. Nowara explained that Nour had done so "in
order to maintain institutional continuity," and to fend off
any potential challenges to the party leadership by Moussa
Moussa, Nour's former best friend, who was expelled from the
party for disloyalty in September after trying to topple Nour
in an internal putsch. Moussa and several associates, widely
believed to have acted at the behest of the GOE, went on to
form their own Ghad Party, which now issues a parallel
newspaper and claims to be the "real" Ghad Party.

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Legal Prognosis
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8. (C) Judge Gom'a has 30 days from December 24 to issue the
written verdict. The defense must then file its appeal
within 30 days of the publication of the written verdict. In
the case of a felony conviction, appeals are sent to Egypt's
Court of Cassation.


9. (C) Nour's lead defense attorney, Amir Salim, was widely
quoted immediately after the December 24 verdict as vowing to
appeal and predicting that Judge Goma's decision would be
"relegated to the wastebins" of Egypt's legal history.
(Note: The Court of Cassation overturned Judge Goma'a's 2002
conviction of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, after sharply criticizing
Gom'a's legal reasoning. The Court stopped just short of
directly accusing Goma'a, and the prosecutors that brought
the case, of gross incompetence. End note.)


10. (C) Judge Nabil Omran (protect),Vice President of the
Court of Cassation, told poloff that appeals are normally
considered by the court "no sooner than two years" after the
case is filed. However, Omran added, the Court sometimes
considers appeals more quickly "in cases where public opinion
is a factor." He opined that the Nour case appeared to meet
this criterion and predicted that it would be reviewed by the
court "in April or May."

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Comment
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11. (C) In the past month, we warned many of our GOE
contacts, at senior and working levels, that the Nour case,
should it result in a conviction and stiff sentence, would
introduce serious tensions in the bilateral relationship. We
believe the GOE is still digesting the December 24 statements
from Washington - we have not yet had any substantive
reaction to them. Always sensitive to Egypt's image abroad,
particularly in Washington, we expect senior GOE officials
will have cringed at the sharp tone of our statements, but
pragmatists in the GOE may also realize that Cairo's best
interests would be served by a quick, dignified resolution to
the problem.


12. (C) At the same time, a nationalist blow-back led by
reactionaries in "independent" papers like Al-Osboa, as in
the SEI case, is inevitable. We can expect nationalist
proxies to slam Washington for its "arrogant interference"
and for its "insulting" criticism of Egypt's "sacrosanct"
judiciary. Such charges will likely be accompanied by an
escalated campaign to defame Ayman Nour as a corrupt western
puppet. The impetus to do so may be greater given that his
domestic following is considerably larger than SEI's ever
was. Such tactics may meet some success in affecting the
Egyptian public's perceptions of this case, but could also
backfire, given the different political context: Public
deference to the GOE has eroded markedly in the five years
since SEI was first arrested, most recently evidenced by the
widespread criticism of the GOE that followed the
November-December parliamentary elections. End comment.

JONES