Sunday, August 31, 2014

A00168 - Ahmed Seif, Pioneering Egyptian Rights Lawyer








*****

AUGUST 28, 2014
Egypt has just lost one of its human rights pioneers, and Human Rights Watch has lost a dear friend, with the passing of Ahmed Seif Al Islam on August 27, 2014, following his hospitalization for heart ailments. Seif – as his friends in the movement usually addressed him – was a founder and long-time director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC), named after another early human rights activist who died at a tragically young age.
Joe Stork, Middle East and North Africa deputy director
Joe Stork is the deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
Egypt has just lost one of its human rights pioneers, and Human Rights Watch has lost a dear friend, with the passing of Ahmed Seif Al Islam on August 27, 2014, following his hospitalization for heart ailments. Seif – as his friends in the movement usually addressed him – was a founder and long-time director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC), named after another early human rights activist who died at a tragically young age.
Seif, a human rights lawyer, was on the legal defense team in numerous high-profile trials of human rights, labor, and more broadly political activists in the Hosni Mubarak years, but he was above all an activist himself. The HMLC was more often than not the coordinating center for planning peaceful demonstrations and then, invariably, for deploying lawyers to various detention centers in response to the usual mass arrests that followed such events. Their office on a six-floor walk-up in Bab al-Luq (the elevator more often than not was inoperable) was close to the main courthouse, the General Prosecutor’s office, and the Lawyers Syndicate, and was Cairo’s networking site par excellence, even with the advent of social media. This was the case for instance when security forces raided the HMLC offices on the morning of February 3, 2011, and arrested Seif along with 30 other lawyers, activists, and human rights defenders gathered there, including then-Human Rights Watch researcher Dan Williams.
Seif lived and breathed a deep commitment to human rights and peaceful political activism, though he did not hesitate to represent in court persons accused of political violence. Human rights was not something confined to his crowded office at the HMLC. His wife, Leila Soueif, teaches mathematics at Cairo University and was a leader in the March 9 movement of professors and others promoting academic freedom. His son and daughter, Alaa Abdel-Fattah and Sanaa Seif, have been in jail since June 11 and June 21 respectively for participating in peaceful protests despite the draconian assembly law decreed in November 2013.
I visited Seif in his home in May 2013; an inveterate cigarette smoker, he was recovering from a respiratory ailment at the time. Then-President Mohamed Morsy had appointed Seif to serve on a commission looking into arrests and military court trials of protesters under the 18-month reign of the Supreme Committee of the Armed Forces (SCAF) between the February 2011 departure of Hosni Mubarak and Morsy’s taking office on June 30, 2012, following his election a few weeks earlier. President Morsy accepted the commission’s recommendation of a general amnesty for all such convictions and dropping charges against those not yet brought to trial. Seif was a firm opponent of military court trials for any civilians. “We came under a lot of pressure from the Interior Ministry on the one hand and revolutionaries on the other, that this or that ‘thug’ should not be pardoned,” he told me then. “My view was that these people were not threats to society.”
In a conversation I had with Seif several years ago, in February 2007, he told me how he became engaged in human rights activism and lawyering:
“I didn’t start in human rights. I started as a Communist in an underground organization. I was tortured in 1983. Under torture I had to give a lot of information. I was turned into a wreck of a human being. A small example: each time I had a meal of torture, there was the sound of a bell. Since then, whenever I hear the sound of a bell my body shakes.”
“At that time I made a decision that it was no use to have political activity without dealing with human rights. I was sentenced to five years in prison. During this period I studied law. I left jail in 1989, November I think. By December I was a member of the Bar, and active in the Lawyers’ Syndicate. After two years as an apprentice, I started volunteer work on issues of freedoms and rights. The first time was during the Kafr al-Dawwar site of major textile industries strikes in 1994, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s apostasy case.”
 “I was not a member of any organization then. I wanted an organization to which I could fully commit myself. At that time also I didn’t have that much time to give. I started my career at the age of 40. It was necessary to focus on practicing law. What ended my hesitation was the trade union elections in 1996. I asked Hisham Mubarak, who had recently started the Center for Human Rights Legal Assistance, or CHRLA, ‘What do you intend to do regarding the elections?’ He said, ‘We don’t have anyone to take this responsibility.’ He told me I could volunteer.”
“The elections were over in November 1996. By then I was full time. This didn’t just open the door to work with labor unions. It opened constitutional cases. Those are among the most important things with which HMLC deals. I’ve been part of HMLC from the beginning. Among its principle goals is to challenge the government’s efforts to control human rights groups.”
Our 2007 conversation ended with Seif’s reflections on the state of human rights activism in Egypt at that time.
“Our greatest accomplishment is that rights issues are part of the domestic agenda, and in the state, in their discourse, in academic research, in the media, and the legal profession. We managed to create a social consensus against torture. That didn’t exist 10 years ago. The Communists would say secretly, ‘It doesn’t matter if Islamists are tortured.’ And the Islamists would say, ‘Why not torture communists?’ In the last five years you don’t hear this from anyone. The government created the National Council for Human Rights – responding to external pressures, for cosmetic purposes, but also responding to the situation in the country. The acceptance of several sectors of the Egyptian society to have foreign monitoring of elections, or monitoring by rights groups, this is now a demand of most political currents. The quantity of complaints that citizens make to rights groups, I don’t think the groups suffer from any lack of work! All organizations, no matter how new, have a problem of excessive expectations in terms of their capacity. This is despite all the counter-propaganda the government puts out with the help of others – like underground Communist organizations that see us as some kind of American clone. They are very dear friends, whom I also defend of course. And when I go to defend them, they don’t object.”
I asked Seif in 2007 about his thoughts on the fact that the growth of human rights activism coincided, roughly, with the ascendancy of political Islam.
“I am the wrong person to answer this question. My father was a former Muslim Brother. The first person to defend us when we were tortured in 1983 was a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated lawyer. WhileAl Ahali, the leftist-secularist Tagammu` newspaper, refused to publish anything about our case! This taught me a lesson – that torture is something that must concern all of us no matter who is the victim. I thank my lawyer for this lesson. He probably doesn’t know how he changed me.”
“Within the Islamist groups, it is possible to find activists who see things the way we do regarding human rights, because they suffer a lot from violations. You find problems when it comes to rights that are sensitive – for example, freedom of belief. But we work with everybody: we defend Islamists the same way we defend Communists. At the same time we defend homosexuals, or people accused of insulting religion. So we don’t get attacked by the Islamists. We are playing a principled role in so many varied cases. People interested in these cases know the scope of what we are doing. This makes us acceptable. ‘OK, they’re crazy,’ they say about us. ‘Fine!’”
The death of Ahmad Seif now, when Egypt needs a strong human rights movement perhaps more than ever, comes at a great loss to his colleagues and co-defenders in Egypt and beyond. It is a terrible time not to have Seif’s counsel, because the best of Egypt today owes so much to Seif’s exemplary life and achievements.

*****

Ahmed Seif , also written as Ahmad Saif (el-Islam Hamad Abd el-Fattah) ( January 9 , 1951 - August 27, 2014 ) [1] , was an Egyptian journalist and human rights lawyer.
Seif was in the eighties, a five-year prison sentence for activism. Even then he was still several times down for political reasons, including during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. [2] [3] [4] In 1999 he was one of the founders of the Hisham Mubarak Center for Law . In 2011 he was leader of the political movement Kefaya . [2] [3]
He is father of two prominent activists during the Egyptian Revolution, Mona Seif and Alaa Abd El Fattah . Seif is married to Laila Soueif , a professor of mathematics at the University of Cairo which many protests helped late 20th and early 21st century organization in Egypt. [2] [5]

Biography edit ]

Because Seifs involvement in the socialist movement, he was arrested in 1983 and tortured by agents of the Egyptian security forces. For five years he was in prison and since his release, he focused on the fight against torture in Egypt.Already in 1989, shortly after his release, he took one of the most important human rights issues in the country itself. [6]Because of his struggle against torture and injustice he grew over the years into a central figure in several successful Egyptian human rights cases. [2]
In 1999 he was one of the founders of the Centre Hisham Mubarak for Law in Cairo , [6] a center named for Hisham Mubarak , a lawyer who had focused on since the early nineties until his death, human rights and the granting of legal assistance to victims of violations of it. [5] [7]
He was one of the attorneys in the case against fifteen defendants after the bombing in Taba and other places in the Sinai in October 2004, he turned on the one hand strongly against the wave of bombings, but on the other hand argued that they in no way torture or other violations justification of human rights. Nevertheless, all fifteen convicted on the basis of confessions obtained during the torture. [6] Other high-profile cases with other lawyers instance were the Queen Boat case in 2001 in which 52 men were tried on the basis of their sexual orientation, and the defense of 49 textile workers because they had participated in protests on April 6, 2008 in Part Mahalla .
In 2006 he took on the defense of Karim Amer , the first blogger who was indicted for a crime because of his criticism of the Internet on President Hosni Mubarak andIslam . Amer was sentenced to four years imprisonment in this case. [6] [8]
Seif died on August 27, 2014 at the age of 63 after he during open-heart surgery in a coma was hit. [1]

*****

Ahmed Seif , also written as Ahmad Saif (el-Islam Hamad Abd el-Fattah) (January 9, 1951 - August 27, 2014), was an Egyptian journalist and human rights lawyer.

In the 1980s, Seif served a five-year prison sentence for activism. Afterwards, he was still several times imprisoned for political reasons, including during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. In 1999, he was one of the founders of the Hisham Mubarak Center for Law. In 2011, he was also leader of the political movement Kefaya. 

Seif was the father of two prominent activists during the Egyptian Revolution, Mona Seif and Alaa Abd El Fattah.  Seif married to Laila Soueif, a professor of mathematics at the University of Cairo. 

Because of Seif's involvement in the socialist movement, he was arrested in 1983 and tortured by agents of the Egyptian security forces. For five years, he was in prison. After his release, Seif focused on the fight against torture in Egypt.  In 1989, shortly after his release, he took on one of the most important human rights issues in the country itself.  Because of his struggle against torture and injustice he grew over the years into a central figure in several successful Egyptian human rights cases. 

In 1999, he was one of the founders of the Centre Hisham Mubarak for Law in Cairo, a center named for Hisham Mubarak, a lawyer who had focused on human rights and the granting of legal assistance to victims of violations of human rights laws. 

Seif was one of the attorneys in the case against fifteen defendants after the bombing in Taba and other places in the Sinai in October 2004.  Seif argued strongly against the wave of bombings while. on the other hand, arguing that the defendants in no way tortured of engaged in violations of human rights. Nevertheless, all fifteen defendants were convicted on the basis of confessions obtained during their torture.  

Other high-profile cases with other lawyers were the Queen Boat case in 2001, in which 52 men were tried on the basis of their sexual orientation, and the defense of 49 textile workers because they had participated in protests on April 6, 2008 in Mahalla.

In 2006, Seif took on the defense of Karim Amer, the first blogger who was indicted for a crime because of his criticism, on the Internet, of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Islam.  Amer was sentenced to four years imprisonment. 
Seif died on August 27, 2014 at the age of 63 during open-heart surgery.

A00167 - Robert Sherrill, Provocative Journalist




Photo

Robert Sherrill published several books on political topics, and wrote for The Nation and numerous other news outlets. CreditMedina Dugger

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Robert Sherrill, a provocative journalist and author who rose to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s for his sharp assessments of gun culture, military justice, Lyndon B. Johnson and other complicated topics, died on Tuesday in Tallahassee, Fla. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Celia Dugger.
Mr. Sherrill was not much for measured persuasion or gentle phrasing, and while his positions usually leaned left — particularly in articles he wrote for The Nation, where he was a correspondent for many years — he pointed his skewer all around. The titles of some of his books convey his approach.
In 1967, he published “The Accidental President,” a critical portrait of Johnson. “Military Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music” was published in 1970. Three years later came “The Saturday Night Special: And Other Guns With Which Americans Won the West, Protected Bootleg Franchises, Slew Wildlife, Robbed Countless Banks, Shot Husbands Purposely and by Mistake, and Killed Presidents — Together With the Debate Over Continuing Same.”
In “The Saturday Night Special,” Mr. Sherrill argued for strengthening gun laws but also said that many victims of gun crimes were the “refuse” of “trashy” American society. He had little patience with gun-control advocates, many of whom he said “clobbered the senses with distorted statistics hysterically interpreted,” or with hunters, whom he described as “a swinish lot.”
Reviewing the book in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said Mr. Sherrill “generalizes with almost malicious abandon.” But he nonetheless praised the book as “an emetic, an enema, a bloodletting (without bullets)” that “cleanses one of illusions, clears the air and seems to make room for new beginnings.”
In addition to writing books, Mr. Sherrill wrote for The Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, Esquire and other publications. He wrote more than two dozen articles for The New York Times Magazine, including a long one in 1974 about Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s behavior surrounding the night he drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, an accident that killed his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. That article led to a highly praised book on the subject, “The Last Kennedy.”
Mr. Sherrill did most of his writing for The Nation, where his titles included White House correspondent, Washington correspondent and corporations correspondent. He left the magazine in 1982, several years after the death of one of its most noted editors, Carey McWilliams.
“Victor Navasky is a New York liberal,” Mr. Sherrill said in a 1984 interview with Atlanta Weekly, speaking of The Nation’s editor at the time. “I just don’t see eye to eye with most New York liberals. McWilliams was a Western radical — he grew up on a cattle ranch in Colorado — and he was my kind of guy.”
Robert Glenn Sherrill was born on Dec. 24, 1924, in Frogtown, Ga., and moved frequently as a child. His father, Henry, was a newspaper reporter who held a string of jobs and taught his son how to catch moving freight trains during the Depression. His mother, the former Susan Olive McGinley, was later an administrator at Pepperdine University in California, where Mr. Sherrill received a bachelor’s degree after serving as a merchant mariner.
He later earned master’s degrees in English, from the University of Texas in 1956, and in library science, from the University of Minnesota in 1960. He juggled his studies with jobs teaching English and working as a reporter and editor at papers in Arizona, California, Texas and Tennessee. In the 1960s, he worked at The Texas Observer and The Miami Herald. He joined The Nation in 1965.
In addition to Ms. Dugger, an editor at The Times, his survivors include his wife, Jean; a stepson, Gary Dugger; and six step-grandchildren. His first wife, Mary, who helped him research many of his books, died in the early 1990s.
Mr. Sherrill ruffled feathers of various colors. In 1982, gays criticized him when he wrote a review in The New Republic of the book “God’s Bullies,” by Perry Deane Young, in which he called Mr. Young “queer.” He explained later that he did not like that the word “gay” had come to mean homosexual instead of happy. Years earlier, he was pleased to be on President Richard M. Nixon’s so-called enemies list.
He was denied a White House press pass for several years while working for The Nation. The American Civil Liberties Union went to court on his behalf and won.
“The fun thing about this was that when I was finally going to get a press pass, I never applied,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. “I didn’t want to be in the White House. I had been in Washington long enough to realize that was the last place to waste your time sitting around.”

A00166 - Fernand St. Germain, Legislator Tied to S&L Crisis




Photo

Fernand St Germain, left, dexterously worked Washington’s power levers behind the scenes and was beloved at home for bringing federal funds to Rhode Island.CreditJames K.W. Atherton/The Washington Post, via Getty Images
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Fernand St Germain, a 14-term Rhode Island congressman who was chairman of the House banking committee before the savings and loan crisis exploded, and who lost his seat after drawing attention for his ties to the industry he had helped deregulate, died on Saturday at his summer home in Newport, R.I. He was 86.
The cause was kidney failure, his daughter Laurene Sorensen said.
By the time Mr. St Germain, a Democrat, became the chairman of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs in 1981, he was a veteran of Congress who dexterously worked Washington’s power levers behind the scenes and was beloved at home for bringing federal funds to Rhode Island.
“If you like old-fashioned, kind of tough, not always the cleanest but very efficient politicians, he’s your guy,” James A. Morone Jr., a longtime political science professor at Brown University, said in an interview.
In 1983, Mr. St Germain helped broker a deal that won Democratic votes for an $8.4 billion appropriation for the International Monetary Fund — a priority for President Ronald Reagan — by tying it to a $15.6 billion housing measure.
“You can call me landslide Freddy,” Mr. St Germain said after the I.M.F. measure passed the House by a narrow margin.
But his most famous legislative victory marred his political legacy. In 1982, Mr. St Germain, along with Senator Jake Garn of Utah, a Republican, sponsored a bill that was intended to shore up ailing savings and loan associations, midsize institutions that were primarily in the business of offering mortgages.
The bill broadened their investment and lending powers, allowing them in effect to take bigger risks. Before he signed it, President Reagan called the bill “the first step in our administration’s comprehensive program of financial deregulation.”
But the newly empowered savings and loans overextended themselves, andmore than 1,000 went under in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A bailout cost taxpayers $124.6 billion at the time, according to the government.
“It was giant Ponzi scheme, it all collapsed, and it can be traced directly to this deregulation,” Professor Morone said.
While in office, Mr. St Germain received loans, amassed real estate holdings and even bought a small group of International House of Pancakes restaurants. In 1985, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal suggested that he and his associates in a variety of business deals had benefited from his political influence.
The Department of Justice and the House ethics committee opened investigations. The committee found that he had inaccurately reported some financial transactions and improperly accepted travel paid for by a Florida bank, but did not take further action. The Justice Department declined to press criminal charges.
Still, the inquiries provided fuel for his critics. In 1988, he fought off a tough primary challenge before losing the general election to Ronald K. Machtley, a Republican lawyer who campaigned with a live pig named Les Pork — a gibe at Mr. St Germain’s skill at bringing home federal funds that was also seen as comment on his ethics.
The loss was crushing for a man who kept his phone number listed while in office and instructed his daughters to take detailed messages of constituent concerns if he was not home.
“It was like a death in the family,” Ms. Sorensen said. “He really grieved.”
Fernand Joseph St Germain — he long insisted there ought to be no period after the “St” in his last name because he was no saint — was born Jan. 9, 1928, in Blackstone, Mass., and grew up in Woonsocket, R.I., a mill town where his father was a textile worker.
He attended a seminary high school in Rhode Island because his mother wanted him to be a priest, but later enrolled in Providence College, graduating in 1948.
Mr. St Germain attended Boston University Law School and graduated in 1955, but not before winning a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives at age 24. After leaving Congress, he worked briefly as a lobbyist and then for a telecommunications firm and moved his primary residence to Florida. He retired in 1999.



His wife, Rachel M. O’Neill, died in 1998. Besides Ms. Sorensen, he is survived by another daughter, Lisette Saint Germain, and a sister, Claire Velardi.