On April 28, 2006, the New York Times and Washington Post report an escalation of tensions between President Mubarak’s regime and the judiciary in Egypt.  According to the Times, a relatively small group of demonstrators assembled before the Judges club outside Cairo’s High Court in support of Mahmoud Mekky and Hesham Bastawisi, two judges who are being prosecuted by the government after exposing election fraud and forgery by government and other judiciary officials during last year’s parliamentary elections. Seven other judges have been stripped of their immunity on similar grounds.

The Times reports the demonstrators joined eighty other judges holding a sit-in for over a week at the Judges Club. The demonstrators and judges called for an independent judiciary as part of a greater campaign for political reform in Egypt. A coalition of 7,000 of Egypt’s 9,000 judges is pressing the government for a new law guaranteeing judicial independence. Ghada Shahbandar, a leader of an electoral monitoring group, said: "We can not aspire to have reform without an independent judiciary. It is the first and most important block in the reform process."  As the Post observes, “Many Egyptians regard judges as a potential counterbalance to the near absolute presidential power in Egypt.” 

According to the Times, Mubarak, who has been under pressure from the West to liberalize, has tried to downplay the significance of the crackdown on the judiciary as “an intramural matter, not involving the government,” However, 3,000-10,000 riot officers were deployed to disperse the demonstrators, and witnesses say fifty arrests were made. The report suggests that the magnitude of the response, coupled with the postponement of municipal elections, reflect a defensive posture on the part of the Mubarak regime, which, according to the Post, has also intimated an extension of emergency laws that were instituted in 1981 limiting freedom of speech and political activities. As tensions mount in light of a recent spate of suicide bombings, a government led crackdown would further radicalize the opposition and derail any progress that has been made toward liberalization.

A May 31 Washington Post article, “New Vehicle for Dissent is a Fast Track to Prison,” describes the arrests of political internet bloggers as another chapter in Mubarak’s crackdown on dissent.  Three hundred protestors, including 6 bloggers have been arrested in demonstrations last month.  Among them, Alaa Seif al Islam was arrested during a sit-in supporting the two whistle-blowing judges under investigation for implicating the government in electoral fraud in last November’s parliamentary elections.  According to The Post, “bloggers can be jailed indefinitely” under Egypt’s 25-year-old emergency laws.  A crackdown on bloggers would be a blow to activists who have been utilizing the internet as a forum for free expression as well as to mobilize hundreds of citizens to attend rallies.  Seif al Islam’s co-blogger Hassan called blogging “citizen journalism,” recounting Seif al-Islam's detailed coverage of sectarian violence between Muslims and Coptic Christians in Alexandria.

Mubarak has defended the persecution of dissidents calling their speech, “libel and blasphemy,” while pointing to government tolerance of protests as “evidence of democracy.”