The Lawyers Syndicate has provisionally suspended rights lawyer Nessma AlKhatib from practicing law and referred her to a disciplinary trial, Syndicate Secretary-General Issa Abu Issa told Al Manassa. The decision was taken by the syndicate’s executive board, which includes Syndicate head Abdel Halim Allam, the syndicate’s two deputies, and its secretary-general.
Rights lawyer Fatma Serag, a member of the defense team for lawyer and feminist activist Nessma AlKhatib, said she was shocked by the executive board’s decision to suspend Nessma over a Facebook post in which she called for physical and medical protection for sex workers amid the health risks they face.
Serag told Al Manassa that, under the Legal Profession Law, “we still have the opportunity to file an appeal against the suspension from practicing the profession within 30 days, which we are currently preparing.”
The suspension decision came one day after an investigation by a syndicate committee made up of four board members, who heard the feminist activist’s statements and the defense team’s arguments in response to complaints accusing her of “calling for the legalization of prostitution.”
In the post, which she later deleted, Nessma had started a discussion about the conditions of sex workers, stressing that they “already exist” and must be approached from a rights-based and feminist perspective.
Explaining the suspension decision, Abu Issa said, “We asked her, out of consideration for the profession, and because she is a colleague and young and so on, to apologize or deny what she published. But during the investigation with her, we found that she was convinced of her opinion and did not apologize.”
Serag confirmed the same account to Al Manassa, saying, “One member of the investigation committee suggested that Nessma AlKhatib apologize, saying, ‘What if we asked you to apologize to resolve the crisis?’” She added, “But Nessma did not respond, and we, as her defense team, responded instead. We rejected the request. What would she apologize for? Her opinion?! We submitted all the evidence disproving that she had called for legalizing prostitution.”
But the syndicate secretary-general, responding to the argument that the post falls under constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression, said, “An opinion must conform to the law, norms, and traditions, and must not violate religion or the law,” as he put it. He added, “Prostitution is a crime punishable under Egyptian law.”
Under Legal Profession Law No. 17 of 1983 and its amendments, a suspension decision entails transferring the provisionally suspended lawyer, or the lawyer barred from practicing the profession, from the roster of practicing lawyers to the roster of nonpracticing lawyers for the duration of the suspension. As a result, the lawyer is barred throughout this period from carrying out any legal work.
Serag had previously told Al Manassa that AlKhatib’s defense team had refuted during the investigation the accusations brought against her over her latest post, stressing that their defense focused on disproving the charge of “legalizing prostitution” that had been attributed to their client in the media.
Responding to Nessma’s denial of the claims, Abu Issa asked, “What does medical protection for a group practicing a crime even mean? This means recognizing them, legalizing their status, and treating them as a group in society that is accepted.”
He continued, “In her post and in what she said during the syndicate investigation, the lawyer called this group ‘women working in the sex trade,’ which is also a strange term, as if a woman were a commodity to be bought and sold. This means she agrees with and wants to legalize prostitution and treat those working in it as a group deserving society’s care.”
In the same context, Abu Issa does not consider the suspension decision to amount to a custodial role by the syndicate over its members’ opinions. “One of the conditions for a lawyer’s registration and continued membership is that they do not violate public or professional conduct standards. What the lawyer said was not an opinion, but a call to legalize a crime punishable by law,” he said.
Abu Issa said the decision to suspend Nessma AlKhatib from practicing law was based on provisions of the Legal Profession Law, particularly Article 13 on the conditions for registration on the general roster, Article 98, which allows a lawyer who commits an act that undermines the honor of the profession or engages in disgraceful conduct that diminishes its standing to be punished by being barred from practicing for three years, and Article 99, which grants the executive board the power to provisionally suspend a lawyer facing disciplinary proceedings until the case is decided.
