Editor gets two months in prison, amid no sign of progress in civil liberties three years after Mubarak's reelection

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the two-month prison sentence which a Cairo appeals court passed on Ibrahim Issa, the editor of the opposition weekly Al-Dustour, on 28 September after upholding his conviction on a charge of publishing false information about President Hosni Mubarak. This is supposed to be Mubarak's last term as president, but there has no let-up in the repressive policies he has been pursuing since he took over as president in 1981, the press freedom organisation said. Issa's lawyer plans to appeal to the supreme court, but sentences are not usually suspended while appeals are heard, and Issa may have to start serving his sentence in the next few days. “A secondary school student's brief arrest in June for criticising President Mubarak in an exam may be anecdotal, but Issa's conviction highlights the oppressive reality of relations between the authorities and the independent press,” Reporters Without Borders said. “None of the electoral promises Mubarak made in September 2005 have been respected. The decriminalization of press offences is still a dream, and the state of emergency was recently extended pending the adoption of an anti-terrorism law, posing a potential danger for journalists.” Reporters Without Borders added: “Issa's case also illustrates the judicial system's subservience to the government. Other journalists reported the rumours about Mubarak's presumably declining health, but he was the only one to be prosecuted. The trial was ridiculous, with the prosecutor even trying to get the central bank governor and the head of stock exchange regulatory authority to testify that Issa's report was to blame for the fall in Egyptian stocks. Nothing was spared to guarantee his conviction.” The ruling by the appeal court in the Cairo district of Boulak Abou El-Ela upheld Issa's conviction by a criminal court in March on a charge of disseminating false information liable to cause unrest and harm the country's reputation under articles 171 and 188 of the criminal code. At the same time, the appeal court took four months off the original sentence of six months in prison. The prosecution was brought against Issa following a complaint by a member of the ruling National Democratic Party. Issa's lawyer, Issam Abou Issa, told Reporters Without Borders he has filed an appeal before the supreme court on the grounds that there was no legal basis for the conviction. He said he had also filed for petition for a suspension of the appeal court's decision. “This ruling opens the gates of hell to Egyptian journalism,” Issa told Agence France-Presse. It is not the first time he has been tried and convicted. A criminal court in the Cairo district of Al-Agouza sentenced him and three other newspaper editors to a year of forced labour on a similar charge in September 2007. They have so far avoided going to prison by paying a bond pending the outcome of their appeal. Logo : © AFP