Abstract
Prosecutions were central to the transitional justice process in the 5 years immediately following the 2010–2011 Arab Spring uprisings. It is no surprise, then, that many civil society actors prioritised criminal accountability through various strategies. Given the restrictive environment that dominates both the pre- and post-transition period in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, what strategies did civil society devise to advance transitional justice? I argue that civil society pursued three primary strategies designed to grapple with turbulent transitions that have morphed into renewed forms of repression. First, nongovernmental organisations that were established both before and after the uprisings have persistentlyprioritized the documentation of human rights abuses. Second, individual lawyers and lawyers working on behalf of civil society organisations representing victims have been persistent in their litigation attempts, despite politicised and weak judiciaries. Third, this litigation has emphasised economic crimes and corruption, in part in response to civil society strategies that aimed to generate accountability for such crimes, even if it meant that responsibility for decades of human rights violations would not be established.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter does not address the post-transition developments that have occurred in Egypt since 2013, namely, the military coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi and its aftermath. While the role of transitional justice in these developments is important, it is beyond the scope of this chapter. Eleven interviews were conducted in Egypt, 7 in Libya and 14 in Tunisia.
- 2.
Gamal Mubarak, who was deputy secretary general of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, was active in Egyptian politics and was thought by many to be pushing his way to the presidency, following in the footsteps of his father.
- 3.
Details of some of the trials and charges are outlined in Ahmed (2015).
- 4.
The ICC arrest warrants were issued for Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah El Senussi in June 2011. Following the death of Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011, the ICC terminated its case against him.
- 5.
The 6 April movement, an influential workers’ rights and human rights mobilising force, was formed in 2008. Khaled Ali also mentioned that the courts and the prosecution do not accept civil society documentation as evidence (personal interview, December 9, 2013).
- 6.
For more on the Madinaty and Palm Hills cases, see Kassem and Fattah (2011).
- 7.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) are examples of NGOs that have increasingly adopted this strategy.
- 8.
- 9.
At the time of writing, the ICC issued two additional arrest warrants in Libya. One was issued under seal on April 18, 2013, for Al-Tuhamy Mohamed Khaled, former head of the Libyan Internal Security Agency. This arrest warrant was unsealed on April 24, 2017. The second arrest warrant was issued onthe 15th August 2017 against Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli, commander of the Al Saiqa Brigade.
- 10.
Elham Saudi, for example, explained that her organisation, Lawyers for Justice in Libya, faced difficulty in obtaining information on the charges.
- 11.
Al-Obaidi and El Zway remained in detention, however, on other human rights charges.
- 12.
Jendouba is a city in northwestern Tunisia. Habib Nassar brought my attention to this case (FIDH and Human Rights League 2010).
- 13.
Habib Bourguiba was Tunisia’s first post-independence president from 1957 to 1987.
- 14.
The establishment of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission in 2014 may, however, provide a potential avenue for pre-transition human rights prosecutions . Mandated with investigating crimes committed by state and organised groups from Tunisian independence in 1955 to December 2013, the Commission has acquired a “quasi-judicial” nature to investigate both corruption and civil and political rights crimes (Robinson 2014).
- 15.
The four organisations that constituted the quartet are the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, the Ligue Tunisienne des Droits de l’Homme, the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.
- 16.
The Arab Network for Human Rights Information has worked with foreign legal organisations to bring torture charges against former Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman (G. Eid, personal interview, May 2, 2012).
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Aboueldahab, N. (2018). Navigating the Storm: Civil Society and Ambiguous Transitions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. In: Brankovic, J., van der Merwe, H. (eds) Advocating Transitional Justice in Africa. Springer Series in Transitional Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70417-3_9
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