On 23 June, the prominent Human Rights activists Sanaa Seif, was abducted in front of the State Prosecutor’s office in Cairo, by plain clothed police officers. Seif was there to report a violent assault she suffered the night before, as she was camped out in front of Tora prison with her mother and sister, in protest. They were attempting to receive a letter from her brother Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a prominent blogger, who is being held in prison since September 2019.
Seif is accused of joining a terrorist organization, spreading false news, inciting protest and terrorist activities, as well as misuse of social media. Her arrest is not a new phenomenon, however, the direct complicity of the State Prosecutor, an independent judicial authority, is. It is, just one more indicator, of a process of de-modernization of the Egyptian state. Since the coup of 2013, there has been a process of structural change within the state, where civilian institutions have fallen under the sway of the security apparatus. This transformation goes beyond a change in personnel; rather, it is a change in the modus operandi of the state, in a manner that reduced the state functions into two aspects. First, repression of all forms of dissent and second, the appropriation of public funds for the enrichment of the military elites.
The end of the independence of the government watchdogs goes hand in hand with an expansion of the role of the military in the economy
One of the more prominent examples of this process dates back to the case of Hisham Geneina, Egypt`s ex-anti-corruption chief, who is currently serving a five year prison sentence for spreading information that harms the military. The saga of Geneina started in 2015, when he publicly claimed that mass state corruption has cost the country around 67.5 billion USD in three years. In response to the claim, a law was issued that gave the president the power to dismiss the heads of government watchdogs, in a move that many legal experts consider to be unconstitutional. In essence, removing any pretence of independence of these watchdogs, and allowing the presidency to shield mass graft and corruption from attempts to expose it. The law stipulates that the heads of the government watchdogs could be removed for vague reasons, such as “loss of trust” or “damaging the national interests”. Geneina, was swiftly removed from his post and imprisoned.
