The text below is the English version of Dr. S. E.
                Ibrahim's Arabic statement on the circumstances
                and reasons behind his imprisonment.  The
                translation is made & distributed
                by his family in Cairo, Egypt.

Statement of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Before State Security Prosecutors

Cairo: July 27, 2000

This is not a case about Egyptians receiving foreign funding from abroad,
for our government is the largest recipient of grants, gifts and aid from
abroad. Our private sector is the second largest recipient of such grants,
aid and loans. At the tail end of this list are civil society
organizations of which Ibn Khaldun Center is one. These organizations
total approximately 15,000, and receive no more than 1% of private sector
receipts and less than 0.1% of what the Egyptian government receives from
these foreign sources: $30M, $300M, and $3,000M, respectively.

The total Ibn Khaldun Center received annually from those sources did not
exceed $300,000 (about 1 million LE). It is therefore impossible that all
this commotion could be over those one million LE, which are spent on
training and employing thirty young people. Additionally, 10% of it is
paid to the government in the form of taxes. All this is done with a
degree of transparency exceeding that of the State and the private sector.

We estimate the government of this country I love has probably spent more
on the investigation and prosecution of this case -- including the costs
of searching and guarding the premises of Ibn Khaldun Center and
imprisoning its staff -- in the past month than the Ibn Khaldun Center's
entire annual budget.

Furthermore, this case is not about uncovering a group of thieves or
embezzlers, whether of the European Union's money or that of any other
donor organization. These organizations have not and will not ask Egyptian
State Security to perform the role of auditing authority for the European
continent. In fact, these organizations entered into contractual
relationships with Ibn Khaldun Center and both parties are bound by the
provisions of the civil contracts, which govern their financial
relationship. Most importantly, Ibn Khaldun Center did not rob an Egyptian
bank, steal from its people, embezzle from its government or smuggle money
across its borders. Just the opposite is true. The Ibn Khaldun Center and
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim help bring a modest amount of funds into the
country and distribute the majority of this amount as salaries and
incentives to some of Egypt's sons and daughters. These sums were
deposited in Egyptian Banks and also fed into the treasury of the Egyptian
government through taxes.

If the State Security authority seeks to expand its scope of
specialization to include financial auditing services, then let it begin
its new responsibility with those who take loans from Egyptian banks and
do not repay, and with those who steal from the Egyptian people and
embezzle from state funds and go unpunished.

This case also cannot be about catching a group of dishonest youth. Let us
say that in a moment of greed or foolishness some staff attempted to
defraud Ibn Khaldun Center, or succumbed to planting forged records of
their efforts to register voters, out of fear of state security
investigators. If it is true that these things took place, then it is Ibn
Khaldun Center and its chairman, as well as its academic and professional
reputation that are the victims -- and not the Egyptian people or the
Europeans, nor certainly the security of the Egyptian state.

If it is later established that some of these young staff did indeed forge
or cheat or betray - let us assume that any or all of that is true - I
draw your attention to an article in Al Ahram newspaper titled "Those Who
Cheat Are Not One of Us", dated July 1st, 2000, the same morning as the
arrest of the Ibn Khaldun staff. In this article the Minister of Education
admitted that group cheating occurred in schools in Port Said and Al
Husaynya in Sharkiya. The article says that high ranking school officials
abused the code of conduct by leaking exam questions for the high school
final examinations in Alexandria. A police sheriff in Cairo transferred
his son from a Nasr City school district to his office district so that he
could provide him with the exam answers. A member of parliament
transferred his son from Maadi to the distant New Valley, so he would have
time to replace his son's exam with a model answer book during the
transportation of exams from the province to the capital.

Or listen to the outcry of Mr. Mahmoud Abul Leil, Governor of Giza, in Al
Ahram El Araby magazine dated 15 July 2000: "Giza's youth let me down. In
a project for youth in Giza we gave fresh graduates shop outlets to start
small businesses. After they had paid small down payments and promised
they wouldn't sell or rent the shops to anyone, they broke their promises.
Some rented the shops secretly, others abused these shops by using them
for illicit and immoral activities."

Or, reading in October Magazine dated July 23rd 2000, Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim
Soliman, Minister of Housing, spoke of another case: "In the Mubarak
project for youth housing, apartments are distributed according to
eligibility criteria, but unfortunately some youth applied using forged
documents. This means that they were even willing to steal from the needy.
We discovered 3,000 improper cases of forged applications, so naturally we
took back the houses from them because they already had alternative
accommodations. Not a single one of them filed a complaint, because they
knew that they had cheated and that they did not deserve this housing".

These are examples of three confessions of two Ministers and one Governor
in one month who fell victim to cases of cheating or forgery from youth -
youth who are similar to those who may have cheated Ibn Khaldun Center.
Keep in mind that Ibn Khaldun Center does not have the resources of the
Ministry of Education, Ministry of Housing, or of that of the Governor of
Giza to either detect or prevent cheating.

Those who prepared this case and tried to implicate the Center should
redirect their efforts to the serious crooks in this country, as they have
spread across Egypt from Port Said to the New Valley and from Alexandria
to Al Hussaynia, passing through Giza and the Mubarak housing project.
Even if some young people betrayed Ibn Khaldun Center they are the
deformed offspring of major swindlers like Habbak, Azzam and many others
who operate freely on Egyptian soil.

This case is not about some youth who may have broken faith with Ibn
Khaldun Center, and this case is not about "receiving international
bribes" for the purpose of tarnishing Egypt's image or reputation. Beyond
the naïveté of these accusations from a legal standpoint, the Ibn Khaldun
Center and its researchers are a source of pride for Egypt abroad. Read
what professor James Manor, Director of the Institute of Development
Studies in Sussex and the coordinator of the Global Project on Civil
Society stated in Al Ahram El Araby magazine on July 22nd, 2000, or what
The Economist wrote while commenting on Ibn Khaldun Center on the same
date. As noted by the London and New York Times (10 July 2000), Washington
Post (16 July 2000) and other world press, the current damage to Egypt's
image abroad is coming from those attacking Ibn Khaldun Center, and from
those who imprisoned a prominent sociologist whose work enhances Egypt and
the Arab World.

These sentiments have been echoed by distinguished intellectuals in Egypt,
among them Dr. Said El Naggar (Al Wafd 19/7/2000), Dr. Abdel Monem Said
(Al Ahram 11/7/2000), Dr. Ibrahim Dessouky Abaza (al Wafd 6/7/2000), and
Dr. Medhat Khafaga (Al Wafd 14/7/2000). Their message is that Egypt's
reputation is tarnished when its security forces announce to the world
that no honest Egyptian could possibly be working in the fields of human
rights and democracy --- that all of them are hired agents motivated by
bribes and foreign funding. Egypt's reputation is further tarnished when
international media from Berlin to Paris and from London to New York
report that Egyptian authorities arrested a 61-year-old professor in the
middle of the night and put him behind bars like a dangerous criminal.

This same sorry arrest scenario was employed by security forces against
the Secretary General of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization in
December 1998. In that instance, Egypt's reputation was dragged through
the mud in front of a distinguished audience gathered to celebrate the
50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris,
where the imprisoned Hafez Abu Saada was among those to be honored.

This case is not about giving national secrets to foreign entities, though
that is the broken record that Egyptian security forces never tire of
using. Similar fabrications were leveled against 102 public figures in
Egypt as early as January 22, 1953. Our security forces may have upgraded
their surveillance equipment and interrogation techniques. However it is
clear that they have not upgraded their thinking over the past fifty
years. They do not realize that Egypt's enemies today are not the same as
those of the past. The foreign entities that Ibn Khaldun Center is accused
of working with are the same organizations that supply the government with
security equipment, food and medicines. They are the organizations that we
have welcomed to help us expand economic partnerships and trade. And the
government of Egypt is engaged with some of these entities in joint
military training operations on a regular basis.

How could one private center be guilty of espionage for the same foreign
organizations that the State has opened up its land, sea and sky to for
military maneuvers? Do they not realize that we are in a new century and a
new millennium? No. This case is not about giving away our secrets, or
tarnishing Egypt's image, or accepting foreign funding, or some youth who
went astray. In the end, this is a case about matters still unspoken.

Those matters still unspoken, which State Security cannot openly
interrogate, include the work of Ibn Khaldun Center along with some of its
sister civil society groups to ensure the integrity of elections and
reduce possibilities for election fraud. Our efforts in this regard were
modest in 1995 but resulted in monitoring 88 polling stations and
reporting on irregularities found. The reports issued by the National
Monitoring Committee we formed became evidence in several administrative
court cases, where judges eventually nullified the results in 80 out of 88
electoral districts.

The courts, in other words, verified the results of our work. We believe
that in order to prevent this from happening again in the upcoming
parliamentary elections, a case has been contrived against us. If certain
forces were hoping to rig elections again in peace and quiet, they needed
to make it appear that the secretary general of the National Monitoring
Committee was himself a forger, a foreign agent, and worse. And they have
succeeded already in a moral character assassination, even if no charges
are ever proven in court. This is part of what has been left unsaid in
this case.

"They plot, but Allah also plots, and Allah is the most powerful plotter
of all." They did not anticipate that on the eighth day of this case
against Ibn Khaldun Center, Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court would
issue its bombshell: invalidation of the sitting parliament and its
predecessor because the MP elections were not monitored independently by
the judiciary.

There is another matter which is left unspoken, and that has to do with
the Copts of Egypt. The Center has been addressing this issue for the past
five years, following an increase in violent sectarian incidents in the
country, from Sanbo to Kafr Demiana, to Ezbat el Akhat to El Koshe. We
drew attention to the problem, we warned of potential damage, and we
called for respecting the rights to full citizenship of Egyptian Copts.
Those rights include the right for full participation in the political
process, including access to the legislature. This has not pleased the
security forces, who still repeat the broken record about foreign circles
instigating all problems inside the country.

What those forces failed to admit is that the ruling National Democratic
Party did not nominate one Copt for parliament in the 222 electoral
districts throughout the country, either in 1990 or 1995 elections. They
did not care to investigate the content of the Egyptian press or education
system to see what is said -or unsaid- about the Copts.

Things happening in this arena now can show us one of the real reasons
behind the vindictive and fabricated tactics of those involved in this
case. Today there is new openness about these issues as a result of the
efforts of the Ibn Khaldun Center; newspapers are writing about the issue
of Coptic nominees for the fall elections in a way that never happened in
1990 or 1995. We at the Center are pleased to see this happening, and we
accept that now we are paying a price for what was formerly left unsaid.

There is a third unspoken area, and that is related to women's
participation in public life. The Ibn Khaldun Center helped found the
Egyptian Organization for Women Voter's Rights (HODA) at a time when we
saw that the percentage of women participating in politics was decreasing
in Egypt while rising everywhere else in the world. What was originally
unspoken has now been fully recognized through the establishment of the
National Council for Women at the beginning of this year. Ms. Amina
Shafik, the director of HODA, was appointed to the select group of
members.

We want to state for the record of this investigation, as well as to the
Prosecutor General, that the Ibn Khaldun Center works at the forefront of
both research and applied action. It is mainly our applied actions that
have provoked a firestorm of negative response. These are predictable
reactions from societal forces opposed to change, open development and
enlightenment. We never imagined that reactionary fear of change would
lead them to use a weapon of moral mass destruction against the leaders of
change, but they have done so with Ibn Khaldun Center.

I have said what I have to say, and I ask God's mercy on me, on them, and
on all Egyptians.

Cairo, Tora Prison: July 27, 2000