An Egyptian rights group on Tuesday scoffed at a government pledge to limit use of its emergency law as an “illusion,” after the interior ministry ignored a court’s request to release seven Shiite Muslims.
The Shiites, in detention since mid-2009, have been charged with “forming a group trying to spread Shiite ideology that harms the Islamic religion.”
“Continuing the ‘revolving door’ policy with detainees proves the amendments to the emergency law are an illusion,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said in a statement.
Parliament extended the law in May but pledged to restrict it to terrorism and narcotic cases. The law allows for indefinite detentions and trials by emergency courts which rights groups say are unfair and harsh.
Police arrested 12 Shiites in April and May 2009, five of whom have since been freed. The remaining seven are being held despite five court rulings ordering their release.
“The interior ministry continues to dismiss court rulings and thinks it is above the law,” said Adel Ramadan, a lawyer representing the detained Shiites.
Shiism, the predominant branch of Islam in Iran and Iraq, has theological differences with Sunni Islam and its followers believe Prophet Mohammed should have been succeeded by his cousin Ali rather than his companion Abu Bakr.
Sunni-ruled Bahrain is mostly Shiite, as is the majority of Lebanon’s Muslims.
Ramadan said interrogators asked one of the arrested men, Mohammed Faruq, to abjure his Shiite beliefs.
“The interior ministry seems to believe that the presence of Shiites in Egypt is a danger,” he said. “They take the same stance towards other sects.”
The interior ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Police in March arrested nine adherents of the Ahmadiyya sect under the emergency law, who were charged with insulting religion.
Ahmadis believe that a 19th century Indian mystic, Mirza Gulam Ahmed, was the Messiah whose coming was predicted by the Prophet Mohammed.
Those arrested have since been released.
The government had promised to release all prisoners detained under the law for reasons other than terrorism and narcotics after the amendments went into effect in June.
But it has already been accused of failing to keep its vow to limit use of the law after it referred five men to an emergency court earlier this month over a street brawl in which guns were fired.
One of the accused men, Emad el-Kebir, had three years earlier won a court case against two policemen who sodomised him with a stick while filming the attack.
The government defended the referral to the emergency court, saying the use of live gunfire in a street brawl terrorised passersby.
The emergency law, which gives police wide powers of arrest, suspends constitutional rights and curbs non-governmental political activity, has been in place continuously since Islamists assassinated president Anwar Sadat in 1981.