Tarek Khedr; is he a terrorist or a drug dealer?
On Sat, 5/15/10, Fawzi Hamad
Tarek Khedr; is he a terrorist or a drug dealer?
Tarek Ahmed Mohamed Khedr, known as Tarek Khedr, the 21 year old student of marine science in Alexandria university, and the activist of April 6 Youth Movement working for democracy in Egypt has been kidnapped on March 25th, 2010 from his university. Few hours later a group of state security officers led by Eslam Shouman, the state security officer responsible for his arrest, headed to his family house to search the house and to investigate the family.
It wasn’t the first time the state security officers head to his house as they did the same thing three days before to investigate about Tarek’s place. The two times the state security officers were having no permission to do that.
The harassments against Tarek Khedr came after his activities on collecting signatures upon the petition released by Dr. Mohamed Elbaradei, the Former Director of AEIA, for amending the Egyptian constitution to have a free and fair elections and ending the emergency state lasted in Egypt for 30 years.
For 13 days no one knew any information about the case or place of Tarek Khedr even his family, till the Attorney General responded to the lawyers’ complaints on April 6, 2010 informing them that Khedr was at El-Attarin police station without giving any reasons for arrest, however, El-Attarin police officers denied his presence.
On April 17th MP Hamdy Hassan filed an urgent statement to the Ministers of Interior, Justice and High-Education to get information regarding the disappearance of Tarek. On April 22nd lawyers filed a complaint to the attorney general about Tarek’s position and he told them on April 27th that he is detained under emergency law without giving any details about his charges or his place. Later, the attorney general told the lawyers that Tarek is detained under the administrative detention order 36/868/2010 from 25-3-2010; again without giving any details about his place.
Finally, on May 11th after MP Hamdy Hassan raised the case of Tarek Khedr in the joint meeting of the parliamentary committees on national security and human rights, Hamed Rashid, the Assistant Minister of Interior for Legal Affairs, declared that Tarek Khedr is under administrative detention according to emergency law due to security reasons related to his political activities and he is now in Wadi El-Natron Prison.
I’m not going to talk about breaching the emergency law itself by violating the right of Tarek to communicate whoever he wants to tell about his detention and place, the right given according to Article 3-bis of the emergency law itself. I’m also not going to talk about the many conflicts between the emergency law and the rights stipulated by the Egyptian constitution and the international treaties signed by Egypt. I’m only going to talk about the republican decree No. 126 of 2010 issued few days ago on May 11th, 2010 to extend the emergency law for more two years and approved by the People’s Assembly talking about not exercising the powers available under Paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 6 of Article 3 the law and to use only authorities available under Paragraphs 1 and 5 of the Article, and using them only for the purposes of countering terrorism and narcotics trafficking.
As Tarek is detained according to paragraph 1 of article 3 of the emergency law (the paragraph that hasn’t been limited by the above-mentioned decree) I really want to ask the Egyptian government and Mr. President Hosni Mubarak, Tarek Khedr, is he a terrorist or he is a drug dealer?
Fwazi Hamad
April 6 Youth Movement