Activist less optimistic about overturning conviction

CAIRO, Egypt -- An Egyptian-American activist said judges are denying his lawyers access to vital evidence he hopes would overturn his convictions for tarnishing Egypt's image and accepting foreign funds without permission from the government.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 63, said defense lawyers cannot collect the evidence because judges have not allowed them to enter his Cairo think-tank, the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies.

"We need these documents, videos ... to show there was no plot," he said Sunday during a hearing in his retrial.

Ibrahim, a human rights activist and sociology professor at American University in Cairo, was convicted last year of accepting a $250,000 European Union grant without government approval, as well as of embezzlement and tarnishing Egypt's image.

A State Security Court sentenced him to seven years in prison, but an appeals court freed him in February after he spent eight months behind bars pending a retrial for him and 27 other defendants, mostly Ibn Khaldun staff members. The new trial began April 27, on the same charges.

Prosecutors say Ibrahim spread false statements about religious persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, saying such comments could undermine the country's reputation abroad.

On Sunday, Ibrahim's defense team again asked the court to let the Ibn Khaldoun center reopen and to remove a ban preventing Ibrahim from traveling abroad to seek medical treatment.

The next hearing was set for June 25.

Police arrested Ibrahim in 2000 after he announced he would monitor Egypt's 2000 parliamentary elections. He had published a study saying Egypt's 1995 elections were rigged.

The decision to order a retrial came after rights groups including Amnesty International, and major Western newspapers, criticized his trial as unfair and politically inspired.