Youssef Sidhom remembers a staunch friend and a great man
Adli Abadir was one of the most brilliant and talented personalities one might encounter in life. Yet the general atmosphere prevailing in Egypt was too stifling to tolerate such a great personality.
Abadir’s emigration was not a bolt from the blue. Although the regime of the 1952 Revolution placed a host of obstacles in his way and confiscated a great deal of his fortune, he was strong enough to show ingenious resistance against those who sought to ruin him.
A turning point in his life came one day in February 1986 when he was falsely accused of offering bribes. Although he learnt of this when he was abroad, and could have stayed where he was, his courage and resolution made him directly fly back to Egypt. He was arrested at the airport. It was one of the most difficult moments in his life when in April 1986, less than three months after his arrest, his mother died. He was allowed to leave prison for a few hours to attend the funeral.
The case against Abadir began when the government issued an international tender for building a giant paper factory in Qous, Upper Egypt. The project was designed to cover Egypt’s paper requirements and create thousands of job opportunities in Upper Egypt. The bid offered by a German company represented by Abadir was favoured, since it was the best in terms of qualifications although bids offered by other suppliers were less costly. Then the bombshell of the Ministry of Industry’s great bribery case was dropped. It was said that the German company bribed the assessment committee to allow it to win the tender. Employees working at Abadir’s company were arrested and the police broke into his house where his mother was living alone.
Abadir’s lawyer was sure of his innocence, but the case took 18 months which he spent in prison. Strikingly, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. It was obvious that he was delivered a prison sentence just to save the face of some influential figures. If he had indeed been guilty, he would have received at least five years in prison. As he left prison the day the ruling was issued, he was overwhelmed with bitterness and grief. Afterwards, he liquated all his business activities and left the country for good.
Antoun Sidhom, who shared a deep friendship with Abadir, wrote in Watani in July 1990 an article entitled “Wa farhatah” (“How happy we are”) to celebrate his friend’s acquittal. He lashed out at the way Abadir and his employees were treated: “The way those honest people were arrested, the defamation they suffered, the shameful photographs circulated by the media, the uncivilised way private homes were searched and the groundless accusations targeted by newspapers made our hearts bleed for them.”
A man of strength and principles, Abadir never ceased to care about the homeland over the 40 years he stayed abroad. He organised several conferences discussing the Coptic question and the grievances of minorities in the Middle East. These conferences—attended by Christians and Muslims alike—defended the rights of the minorities on a citizenship basis.
I had a sole disagreement with him. This was when the Washington Conference decided to refer its recommendations on Copts’ rights to the United Nations. I objected and asked for the recommendations to be referred to the Egyptian leadership, since I was against internationalising the question.
It was sad that the ‘yellow’ newspapers said that Abadir was concerned about Copts’ grievances out of a desire for vengeance.
Abadir’s departure was a great loss to me. He treated me as a son.
He was Egyptian to the marrow; he never ceased to help the needy in Egypt, privately and anonymously, and he spared no effort to defend the cause of citizenship in Egypt.