Another man, named al-Khatib, was detained at a military checkpoint on February 2 while he was traveling by taxi to a bus station to return home to the city of Suez. He said the military detained him for nine days and then brought him to a military prosecutor, along with 20 other detainees. The prosecutor told al-Khatib he had violated military curfew, a charge al-Khatib contested, saying that soldiers had stopped him at 1 p.m.
A military court session for al-Khatib and seven other defendants lasted 10 minutes, al-Khatib said. They were permitted neither to speak, except to deny the charges, nor to consult with court-appointed lawyers. Each defendant received a three-month suspended sentence, al-Khatib said, and soldiers then released them on the Suez-Ismailiya road near Hikstep, east of Cairo.
According to HRW, military courts have convicted dozens of civilians, all charged with criminal offenses, including possession of weapons, since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took control of Egypt on February 11, 2011.
Reports of military trials of civilians, in particular people accused of weapons offenses and other crimes, have surfaced in the past week. While there may be cause to detain and prosecute people suspected of committing crimes, military courts typically do not meet international fair trial standards, HRW said. In at least one case, a military court convicted detainees without the presence of lawyers. The court later dropped the charges.
The Supreme Military Court has announced numerous convictions in recent days, but it is not clear to what extent the prosecutions are related to demonstrations. On March 1 the Supreme Military Court issued a list of three convictions in the city of Ismailiya, and 15 in Cairo, for crimes including weapons possession, assault, and robbery.
On the same day, the state-run Al Ahram newspaper published statements from the Supreme Military Court listing the conviction of 13 other men in Cairo on charges of carrying rifles, explosives, knives, and other weapons, "terrorizing" citizens and violating curfew. Their sentences ranged from 5 to 15 years in prison.
On February 27 the Supreme Military Court announced sentences for 28 people charged with vandalism, carrying weapons, and other crimes at some point during the unrest of the past month. Some of those sentenced had destroyed an ATM machine, tried to steal a taxi, and carried an automatic weapon, the statement said.
On January 29 a group of people in street clothes turned eight men from Mahalla al-Kubra, a textile factory town in the Nile Delta, over to soldiers in the town's Shobra al-Kheima neighborhood, Sayed al-Badrawi, an uncle of one of them, told Human Rights Watch.
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