Jailed Fairmont witness in danger, family and lawyer say, as remand detention drags on

A jailed witness in the high-profile gang rape case known as the “Fairmont case” is severely unwell and at risk of self-harm, according to statements by her family and lawyer, who filed a medical report with the Public Prosecution as part of an appeal for her release from pretrial detention on Sunday.  

Nazly Karim’s lawyer, Tarek al-Awady, said in a Facebook post and later in comments to Mada Masr that the medical report concluded that Karim could harm herself or attempt suicide becuase of her mental condition in jail, and that she is in need of psychiatric therapy and medication. “The medical report makes us fear for our client’s life,” he said in his public post. He called on the prosecutor to order her release. 

Prosecutors renewed Karim’s remand detention for 45 days on Saturday, Awady told Mada Masr. Karim is held on illegal substance charges, he said. 

The website Cairo24 reported on Sunday that Karim’s mother, the actress Noha al-Amrousy, sent correspondence to Maya Morsi, the president of the National Council for Women, calling on her to intervene on behalf of her daughter and secure her release. In the message, which Cairo24 said it obtained, Amrousy said her daughter had been held in solitary confinement for more than 40 days. 

Mada Masr was unable to reach Amrousy for comment. 

Karim is one of the witnesses who came forward with information related to the case alleging that a group of men from highly connected and powerful families drugged and raped a woman at the Fairmont hotel in 2014. Security forces arrested Nazly and three other witnesses in the case in late August amid a smear campaign on media websites affiliated with Egyptian security agencies, which attempted to delegitimize the case as a personal revenge campaign. The articles framed the party at the Fairmont as a “group sex party” and used homophobic slurs to depict what they called a group of “perverts.” Some websites published private, sexually explicit pictures of the witnesses and others involved in the campaign to arrest the accused. 

Also held in remand detention is Seif Bedour, a friend of another detained witness who was with her at the time of her arrest, which took place around the same time as Karim’s. According to Bedour’s family, friends and multiple sources within the campaign to arrest the men accused of the Fairmont rape, Bedour has no connection to the case but simply insisted on accompanying his friend to the station after her arrest. Prosecutors then ordered him held on the same charges as the others, which, according to sources who have seen the case records and spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, include incitement to debauchery, drug use and working to damage the image of the Egyptian state, and managing a social media account to damage the image of Egypt in collaboration with people outside the country. 

Bedour’s friend was later released on bail, but he remains in custody. His mother told Mada Masr earlier this fall that the authorities were profiling him as gay. Last month, Human Rights Watch reported that Bedour and Ahmed al-Ganzouri, an organizer of the Fairmont party also held in custody, were being accused of same-sex conduct based on material authorities obtained from their phones. 

Bedour would have been 14 years old when the Fairmont party and the alleged rape took place, in 2014. It was only this past summer, following an outpouring of testimonies and discussion around sexual violence in Egypt, that the incident came to public attention. Several anonymously run Instagram accounts put out calls for information around the alleged rape, which they said had been videotaped and circulated to dozens of people at the time. 

Soon there were reports that the accused men were using threats, blackmail and other means to pressure people they thought were behind the campaigns to back down. 

The National Council for Women, which Amrousy is currently calling on to intervene, played an important role in starting the official investigation. The victim filed her complaint with the council, and the council then filed a report with the Public Prosecutor on August 4. Three of the nine suspects were arrested in Lebanon, where they had fled, and extradited to Cairo. Two others were arrested in Egypt. The rest, according to the Public Prosecutor’s statements, are outside the country. 

The National Council for Women came under fierce criticism in September for its silence regarding the arrest of witnesses in the case, especially after several people within the campaign to investigate the gang rape said the council had encouraged them to bring witnesses forward.

Nearly three months after the arrest of several of the suspected rapists, as well as witnesses and others connected to the case, it has not gone to trial.