Editorial
When the Perpetrator Becomes a Victim

In a recent development, female protestors and journalists who had been sexually harassed in public during the May 25th referendum have filed a suit against several NDP members and security officers who were at the scene, and submitted it to the Prosecutor's office. In case the Prosecutor's office fails to uncover the identity of the culprits, the women's lawyers will submit the case to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. In fact, submitting these cases to such international organizations is a healthy phenomenon that has been rarely applied in internal political conflicts and that could in the future encourage suppressed political reform activists to channel their causes internationally and thus push the regime to watch its steps.

What is astonishing about the subsequent developments is that some accused security and NDP officials have recently declared their intention to file libel suits against the women accusers. Moreover, while the Interior Minister denied the allegations that the government was involved in these incidents, security officers are persistently pressuring and even threatening female victims to withdraw their charges. In fact, the cases that the concerned NDP and security members intend to file are desperate attempts that seek to save the regime's face in front of the international community, which has expressed its discontent with such lamentable incidents. Finally, if we may presume that the security officials' hands were clean of these crimes why did they remain neutral when the fight between the protestors and the allegedly NDP-hired gangsters erupted? Security was, after all, in the first instance responsible for maintaining order inside and outside the polling stations.

Mohamed Abdel Aziz