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Four of the “AUC 8” go missing
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Youssef Abdelaal, Caravan Staff BEHIND BARS: Relatives of the ‘AUC 8’ try to make physical contact with the defendants, but are unable to through three layers of cyclone screen. |
Youssef Abdelaal, Caravan Staff STUCK TOGETHER: The eighth defendant, Alam El Din Barshim, who was the only prisoner to remain in Cairo, being transferred from the judges chamber to the grill. |
Four of the so called ‘AUC 8,’ actually eight Sudanese refugees accused of conspiring to murder an alleged member of a rival gang in front of the American University in Cairo (AUC) are missing and believed to have been smuggled by state security to Juba in southern Sudan, according to their families.
The disappearance of Kour Madok Deen Kodak, Geem Daniela Delwak, Nasser Bil Leel and Belekel Bil Leel became public when they didn’t show up for their the final trial session on May 4.
The disappearance caused the court to postpone the final verdict until June 3, almost a year after the murder occurred.
The eight defendants are accused of conspiring to murder Malea Fealjour Bekam, who died of stab wounds at the university’s refugee day celebration last June.
“They haven’t contacted us but some of their relatives called us here in Egypt saying they saw them in Juba,” said James Manyang, the four’s pastor at St. Andrews Church in Zamalek.
Manyang added the four refugees’ families are concerned that they might be swept up in conscriptions often forced on prisoners in that part of Sudan and made to join the fighting in Darfur.
“The [non-governmental organizations] we had on our side have lost interest,” said Andrew Dilbert, a graduate student at AUC and a volunteer with Student Action for Refugees (STAR). “I think that’s [the court’s] goal for postponing every time.”
STAR is trying to contact First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, Dilbert added, to ask her to use her influence in speeding up the court proceedings.
Seven of the eight defendants had been released on bail by court order on March 5, but remained in custody by an order from state security. The seven were then transferred to Borg El Arab prison in Alexandria. Alam Eldin Barshim, the eighth defendant who still has murder charges pending against him, remained in the Bab El Khalq appeals prison in Cairo.
One of the lawyers on the case, Ali El Habit, said he was presented with an official document dated March 5— the same day as the release order—carrying the stamp of the Ministry of Interior and stating that the seven “are to be held in a safe place” when he went to argue at the prosecutor’s office that the seven were being held illegally.
El Habit claims that state security does not want the eight released because the defendants will reveal information about evidence that was forged by a member of state security who worked on their case.
Parents and family of the ‘AUC 8’ broke into tears on hearing the court order. “I’ve lost hope,” said Zeinab Soliman, mother of Al Ameen Abbass, a defendant who was there on Sunday. “The other three were present; why can’t the court just release them?”
But according to El Habit, the court cannot rule separately on defendants in the same case.
It took the New Cairo court three hours to issue its order because the other three defendants were late. “We were driven around for three hours in the wrong direction. I tried to tell the driver to go the other way, but he wouldn’t listen,” said Essam Eddin Jubara, speaking to the Caravan behind iron bars and three layers of a dense cyclone screen, in the courtroom.
El Habit also said, there was confusion in the judge’s chamber when Jubara responded to the judge’s inquiry about his charges by saying that the defendants were political prisoners.
“He shouldn’t have said that,” said El Habit. “But then he is being held in a political prisoners’ ward.”
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