Lawyers had to compete with the din of donkey carts and car horns outside the small courtroom in southern Cairo where Ibrahim is being tried on four charges in a High State Security Court: bribing public employees; receiving unauthorized foreign donations in violation of military decree No. 4/1992; spreading information abroad harmful to Egypt’s interests; and swindling international organizations of their funds.

The defense team employed a two-pronged strategy of tight logic and stirring rhetoric to make its case. Rhetorically, they countered the prosecution’s epithets with Ibrahim’s positive attributes, from his status as the Arab world’s premier social scientist to his work as a consultant for international organizations such as the UN and World Bank.

Logically, they sought to undermine the entire legal edifice upon which the prosecution’s case is built, particularly the archaic Article 48 of the penal code, created in 1910 after the assassination of Prime Minister Boutros Ghali. The article makes it easier to prove charges of conspiracy by doing away with stringent requirements for material evidence of criminal intent. The situation-specific military decree issued on 20 October 1992 after the Cairo earthquake was also a crucial element in defense arguments. That decree forbids any NGO from taking any sort of funding without written permission from the Ministry of Social Affairs.

"I want to emphasize to the court the fragility, feebleness, and shallowness of the charges leveled against my client, and the lack of material evidence," concluded lead lawyer Ibrahim Saleh in his 14 April argument. Defense lawyers resumed their arguments on 17, 18, and 19 April after the Cairo Times went to press.

Saleh began the first day on a cordial note, affirming his "esteem" for the prosecution and the desire to continue the "dialogue" with them, but stressed his chagrin at their defamatory language and use of Quranic verses out of context. He handed to lead judge Mohammed Abdel Gayed Shalabi four bound volumes of compiled press coverage of the case as evidence of both the insults directed against his client and used by the prosecution and the few instances where some of the country’s most prominent writers penned defenses of Ibrahim.

Saleh was keen to draw comparisons between Ibrahim’s case and those of bygone great men who were vilified in their own time only to be considered "makers of the century" 100 years later. Taha Hussein, Ali Mubarak, Qasem Amin, Khaled Mohammed Khaled and the very recent Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid were all men whose enlightened ideas were met with derision and hostility from their tradition-bound contemporaries, said Saleh.

He pointed to Ibrahim’s scholarly output of numerous English and Arabic books stacked on a table and asked, "How could we believe that he’s a swindler just because [state security investigations officer] Nasser Mohyieddin said so?" Turning to Ibrahim, Saleh said, "I say to Dr. Saad who’s behind bars today, though he’s used to sitting in the highest places: don’t despair. After 100 years you’ll be called a maker of the century."

Concretely, the defense harped on the selectivity of the prosecution’s methods to emphasize the sloppy, trumped-up charges against Ibrahim. Why were he and his 27 colleagues at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies (ICDS) charged while the head of the League of Egyptian Women Voters (HODA), Amina Shafiq, also deputy editor at Al Ahram newspaper, was questioned for barely half an hour and released? Ibrahim is the treasurer of HODA, but Shafiq is its head and in charge of all programmatic matters. Shafiq is travelling abroad and could not be reached for comment.

Both HODA and ICDS received funding from the European Commission (EC) for projects on voter education and registration. The prosecution asserts Ibrahim swindled the funds but a 13 December 2000 letter from the EC categorically states that "both the Ibn Khaldoun and HODA projects were the subject of external mid-term audits whose reports gave no cause for concern."

Similarly, wondered the defense, why is Ibrahim singled out and criminalized for speaking out on the conditions of Egypt’s Copts while countless writers and intellectuals have done so with equal, if not more, frankness? Lawyers made repeated reference to a famous parliamentary fact-finding mission headed by the eminent late legalist Gamal Al Oteifi in the wake violent clashes between Copts and Muslims in Al Khanka in 1972. The report is widely considered the first wake-up call to the nation about the root causes of sectarian strife, long before Ibrahim took up the issue.

Why is Ibrahim penalized for his election-monitoring commission and call for fairer, unrigged elections when the Cassation Court itself, the nation’s highest appellate authority, ruled that 50 percent of election districts in the 1995 elections witnessed fraud? The High Administrative Court approved state funds as compensation to all candidates whose fair chances suffered from foul play.

Furthermore, lawyers argued that the forged voting cards found at Ibrahim’s home last 30 June were planted there by Nibal Abdel Nabi, an employee at HODA and State Security informant. On 28 June, Abdel Nabi requested from Ibrahim that she leave "important papers" in his house for fear of losing them at the HODA office. She placed them in his study and two days later the arresting State Security officer made straight for the room with the "evidence." Lawyers pointed out that Abdel Nabi was not detained by State Security and was the only one who condemned Ibrahim during interrogation.

Lawyer Ahmad Tal’at’s argument on 15 April took on a more strictly legal cast as he pointed out that as a private company governed by the commercial code, the ICDS could not possibly be subject to military decree No. 4/1992 which applies only to NGOs.

Tal’at did not refrain from strongly condemning the arsenal of emergency legislation governing the country. "What truly harms Egypt’s reputation are not sociological studies but being ruled by emergency law for 21 years where military decrees have become a way to circumvent the rule of law," he said stabbing the air with his finger.

He was not the only one to place the case in a broader context. In 1953, Gamal Al Banna, ICDS board member and president of the International Islamic Confederation of Labor formed the Egyptian Society for Care of Prisoners and their Families. The society was harassed by the state, which dissolved the organization’s board and general assembly and appointed new ones. "I’m in full solidarity with Ibrahim and have always been against state interference in civil activity," Al Banna said.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that the "Ibn Khaldun case," as it is known, has become only the most recent object lesson on the restrictive nature of Egyptian legislation concerning freedom of action and association, from the military decree to the NGO law to article 48 of the penal code.

Significantly, all three are deeply contested. NGO law 153/1999 is currently in redrafting stage after being ruled unconstitutional last June. A recent High Administrative Court ruling states that the military decree is time-bound and applies only to natural disasters like the 1992 earthquake in the wake of which it was issued, and Article 48 is currently under review for possible unconstitutionality.