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Egyptian-American Activist Did Not Need State Approval
CAIRO (News Agencies) - Allies of Egyptian-American human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim came to his defense Saturday, telling a court that he did not need government approval for his activities.
The activist's daughter, Randa Ibrahim, said her father's Ibn Khaldun Center for Human Rights is private and therefore "does not need the authorities' authorization" to receive money.
Ibrahim, who holds U.S. citizenship, is being tried by a Supreme State Security Court on charges he damaged state interests by spreading "false reports" alleging electoral fraud and religious persecution.
Abdel Monem Said, a member of the the Ibn Khaldun Center's administrative council, testified that Ibrahim did not accuse the government of electoral fraud but "only mentioned abuses" in the electoral process.
Said, the director of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, also absolved Ibrahim of accusations he raised the sensitive issue of Egypt's Coptic Christians, saying he "did not mention religious persecution against the Copts, but expressed concerns."
A prominent defendant in the trial, the Ibn Khaldun Center's accountant Nadia Abdel Nour, said the state launched action against Ibrahim after he wrote an article in the Lebanese magazine al-Mijalla in which he criticized the hereditary transfer of power in the Arab world.
The article came after Bashar al-Assad became Syria's president following his long-ruling father Hafez al-Assad's death. Abdel Nour alluded to rumors that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has chosen his son Gamal as his successor.
Ibrahim is accused of accepting $20,000 from the European Union to make a documentary film that "intended to harm Egypt's image abroad" and then paying a Cairo video company less than half the sum to make the film, apparently pocketing the rest.
On Tuesday, Ibrahim said from behind his trial cage that the embezzlement allegations are "nonsense."
He is also charged with forging voter registration cards in the run-up to legislative elections that were held from October 18th to November 14th, and bribing state television officials to promote the Ibn Khaldun Center, according to the charge sheet.
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