DURING the late 1990s the then Editor-in-Chief of the Al-Qabas daily Mohammed Jassem Al-Saqr was sentenced to three years imprisonment because he had published a caricature which was deemed offensive to the divine essence (God). Several attorneys offered to defend Al-Saqr — for some he was their colleague to others just another client and for some others a friend. I remember lawyers Emad Al-Seif, Muhammad Ali Yaseen and others whose names I cannot remember now exerting all their efforts to prevent our dear colleague Al-Saqr from going to jail. Among those who defended him, I was neither his attorney nor his friend, I was just a volunteer.

When we met the Head of the Special Court of Appeals our dear colleague Judge Ahmad Musaaed Al-Ajeel, he set a date for summary proceedings to prevent the enforcement of the verdict.
We were afraid because we did not want Al-Saqr to go to jail. To our surprise and astonishment the only one person who did not show any signs of anxiety was Al-Saqr himself.
When we asked him why he was reluctant and did not fear what awaited him, Al-Saqr told us that he had just received a phone call from a renowned Egyptian journalist and writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.
The man had apparently called him after learning of the verdict. Heikal told Al-Saqr, “Be courageous, you will not be considered a real journalist if you don’t go to prison.”

Mohamed Heikal himself was jailed by the then Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat because he had always maintained close ties with Sadat’s predecessor Jamal Abdulnasser and since Sadat had made a decision to put behind bars all those who were close to Abdulnasser, Haikal was one of them.
I don’t know why I remembered this story while I am away from my homeland and after hearing the news of our colleague Zaid Al-Zaid, who has been sentenced to one month imprisonment in a libel suit which was filed against him by our colleague Abdulmohsen Al-Mudej.

In spite of my differences with Al-Zaid for his unilateral provocative issues in newspapers and on website, I just felt sad when I heard that the man was put behind bars for giving his opinion even though the plaintiff belongs to the same opposition movement as Al-Zaid.
The issue here is what the French say ‘Entre Amis’, meaning ‘between friends’. The legal office which prosecuted Al-Zaid was the office of our dear colleague Mishari Al-Osaimi, who is also among the ‘Les Amis’, ‘opposing friends’ and both of them had used their constitutional rights — Al-Zaid his freedom of speech, which the court viewed as transgression, while Al-Mudej and Al-Osaimi their litigation rights and the court upheld their view.

Therefore, we hope there will be no hard feelings between the two sides. We call for the implementation of this principle in all cases similar to this one in future.
In the meantime, this is the message to our esteem colleague Zaid Al-Zaid: Do not be afraid of the prison. According to Mohamed Heikal, you have become a typical journalist... and as our brothers in Egypt say, ‘Jail is for men’. Tell those who rejoice at your ordeal, ‘I am a prisoner and I am proud’.

e-mail: ali-albaghli@hotmail.com

By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli
Former Minister of Oil