Law and Justice:
A Reading of the Course and Outcomes of the Mubarak Trial

In Salon Ibn Rushd by CIHRS

As part of its Ibn Rushd Salon series, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies invites you to a panel discussion on the details and implications of the Mubarak verdict When: 6 p.m., Sunday, December 7, 2014 Place: The CIHRS office at 21 Abd El-Megid El-Remaly St. (formerly Fahmi St.), in Bab al-Louq, across from the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, floor 7.

Law and Justice:
A Reading of the Course and Outcomes of the Mubarak Trial

Speakers
Ahmed Ragheb
lawyer and director of the National Group for Human Rights and Law

Dr. Amr Abd al-Rahman
director of the civil liberties unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Associate Professor Hani Sayed
chair of the Department of Law at AUC and lecturer at Harvard University

Moderator
Bassem Zakaria Al-Samragy
researcher at the CIHRS

This panel discussion comes following the verdict issued by the Cairo Criminal Court acquitting former president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, former interior minister Habib al-Adli, and six of his senior police deputies on charges of killing demonstrators during the events of the revolution of January 25, 2011. The court’s judgment is the latest in a series of acquittals for Mubarak regime figures, which cleared them of all violations committed in the 30 years of their rule, particularly from January 25 to February 11, 2011. Not one police officer has been convicted of violations, which included arbitrary killing. Meanwhile, the media is playing its role in blaming all these abuses on its Islamist political opponents.

The panel will raise several questions about the relationship between law and politics, the impartiality of the law, and the gap between law and justice in Egypt. How can the law end impunity? Did Mubarak’s trial comply with Egyptian law, but still not achieve justice? Was the issue a shortcoming in the law or a failure in the overall trial procedures from the stages of investigation and evidence gathering?

In this context, the panel will discuss the philosophy of the law and its relationship with the balance of powers and political changes. It will also examine the procedural dynamics of the case against Mubarak for killing protesters that led to the acquittal. What is the legal reasoning for the verdict? What sort of relationship between justice and the law does the verdict posit? Does the verdict mark Egypt as a bastion of impunity? Or can something still be done?

Simultaneous translation from and into English will be provided.

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