Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a leading figure in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, was sentenced this Monday (20) to five years in prison, and two other people were sentenced to four, informed his sister and a judicial source.
Abd El-Fattah, his lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer and blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim were sentenced on charges of “spreading false news” by a specialized Cairo court.
“Alaa was sentenced to five years, Baqer and Mohamed Oxygen to four,” tweeted Mona Seif, the sister of Abd El-Fattah.
“The judge was too cowardly to even inform us,” he said, following the sentence handed down by the court of crimes against state security in the Egyptian capital.
A judicial source, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the verdict to AFP.
The judgments of this court are not subject to appeal and, in addition, require the final approval of the president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Abd El-Fattah is a high-profile programmer, blogger and activist. He mobilized youth during the 2011 revolution, which brought about the downfall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and has been in pre-trial detention since September 2019.
Under Egyptian law, pre-trial detention can last for up to two years, although in practice detainees tend to spend more time behind bars before being tried.
Abd El-Fattah was arrested for carrying out nightly protests spurred by a wealthy contractor in exile, who was calling for the removal of Al-Sisi, accusing him of corruption. Baqer and Ibrahim were also arrested during a wave of repression.
On Saturday (18), the Egyptian Foreign Ministry called Germany’s request for the release of the three dissidents as “flagrant and unjustified meddling in the internal affairs of Egypt.”
Human rights organizations say there are at least 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, in deplorable conditions, crammed into cells.
In a 2019 interview with the US CBS radio program 60 Minutes, Al-Sisi claimed that there were no political prisoners in Egypt.
The former commander-in-chief of the Arab Republic’s army became president in 2014 after leading a coup d’état against Islamist President Mohamed Mursi – the first to be democratically elected in the country – a year earlier.
Since then, any form of dissent has been harshly repressed in the country. Among those arrested for criticizing the political command are academics, journalists, lawyers, activists, actors, opposition politicians, among others.
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