Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Saad Eddin Ibrahim (Arabic: سعد الدين ابراهيم) (born December 3, 1938 in Bedeen, Mansoura, Egypt) is an Egyptian American sociologist and author. He is one of Egypt's leading human rights and democracy activists, and a strong critic of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Biography

Ibrahim is credited for playing a leading role in the revival of Egypt's contemporary research-based civil society movement. A professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, he is the founder of both the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. He is married to Barbara Lethem Ibrahim, director of a center for civic engagement and philanthropy in Cairo. He is on the Board of Advisors to The Project on Middle East Democracy. The Ibrahims have two children, Randa and Amir Ibrahim.

Well before his confrontations with the Egyptian government in the early 2000s, Ibrahim had become a controversial figure in Egypt. He reversed his earlier criticism of Anwar Sadat for his peace initiative with Israel. He gained the respect of Egypt's human rights and civil society community for championing different causes, including Copts, Bahá'ís. and other minorities at a time of rising sectarian tensions.

Ibrahim was arrested, imprisoned and prosecuted in 2000 for using European Union funds for election monitoring, and for allegedly defaming Egypt's image abroad. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. His defense team countered that the real motives behind the government's prosecution of Ibrahim and his assistants was his outspoken criticism of President Hosni Mubarak and his administration. He was tried twice on the same charges in State Security Courts, winning each time on appeal. During a third trial before the highest civil court in 2003, he was cleared of all charges and released, but not before a storm of international protest had put the Mubarak regime on the defensive.

As an independent-minded intellectual, Ibrahim has supported fair elections when they were viewed as incompatible with Egyptian politics, promoted international democratic alliances, and accepted NGO funding from any source that shares peaceful and democratic values, including those in the US. He has recently been under attack in the official press for calling on the U.S. Congress to condition its military aid to Egypt on improvements in the country's human rights record and the freeing of another political prisoner, Ayman Nour. ["Al-Ahram Weekly," June 21, 2007]

In 2006 Ibrahim was awarded the Ion Ratiu Democracy Lecture Prize at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he previously had been a public policy scholar.

entence

On August 2nd, 2008, an Egyptian court sentenced Ibrahim to two years of prison for 'defaming Egypt'. He was granted a bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (US$1,890) and his lawyer expressed his will to appeal. It is reported that Ibrahim is currently in exile outside of Egypt, fearing his arrest one more time upon his return to Cairo. [cite web
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Exiled Egyptian activist sentenced
work =
publisher = Al Jazeera English
date = 2008-08-02
url = http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/08/20088211650154352.html
format =
doi =
accessdate = 2008-08-02]

Sources close to Ibrahim report that he also fears assassination upon a potential return to Egypt.

Ibrahim is living in the United States as a professor of political sociology at Indiana University. [http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=22189]

References

External links

* [http://www.unesco.org/most/ibrahim.htm UNESCO profile]
* [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/10/1414240 Democracy Now! program] 20-minute broadcast interview by Amy Goodman; audio and video files plus print transcript (October 2007).
* [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/news/2001/oct_01.htm "Campaign Against Torture"]
* [http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/ibrahim_interview.htm The Prospect for Democracy in the Middle East A Conversation with Saad Eddin Ibrahim]
* [http://www.democratiya.com/interview.asp?issueid=8 Long interview of Ibrahim] by Professor Alan Johnson of Edge Hill University conducted in February 2007