EGYPT: ENSURE ALAA ABDEL FATTAH IS NOT DETAINED AFTER COMPLETING LENGTH OF UNJUST PRISON TERM

Alaa Abdel Fattah is a prominent political activist and government critic who has been targeted for his role in the 2011 uprising. He is among thousands of individuals who continue to be arbitrarily detained without legal basis in Egypt solely for exercising their human rights and/ or following proceedings violating fair trial rights

Egyptian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Egyptian-British activist Aala Abdel Fattah who will have completed the length of his unjust five-year prison sentence in three days on 29 September, said Amnesty International today.

In reprisal for his activism, Egyptian authorities last arrested Alaa Abdel Fattah on 29 September 2019, and subsequently, following a grossly unfair trial, sentenced him to five years in prison on charges including “spreading false news.” There is a risk that the authorities will refuse to release the prominent political activist, despite having served the full five years in prison, by refusing to count time spent in pre-trial detention as part of his prison sentence already served.

“Alaa Abdel Fattah has spent most of the last decade being repeatedly arrested and unjustly imprisoned simply for peacefully exercising his human rights. He is a prisoner of conscience – he should never have been forced to spend a single minute behind bars. The prospect that the authorities could further extend his unlawful imprisonment instead of releasing him is appalling,” said Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International’s Egypt Researcher. 

“Egyptian authorities have a dreadful track record of indefinitely detaining political dissidents by concocting new reasons to keep them locked up. If the authorities fail to release Alaa Abdel Fattah this would further compound the cruelty and injustice he has already suffered in custody. The Egyptian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release him and allow him to reunite with his loved ones at long last.”

The authorities may also seek to extend his arbitrary detention by bringing fresh charges against him – Egyptian authorities have a track record of indefinitely detaining individuals imprisoned for political reasons by bringing new bogus identical or similar charges, even after a court has ordered their release or they have completed their sentence; an abusive practice known as “rotation”.

For years Alaa Abdel Fattah was detained in deplorable conditions and security officials subjected him to torture and other ill-treatment in custody. Following a public outcry, he was transferred to Wadi al-Natroun Prison in May 2022 where his health and detention conditions improved. It was only recently that authorities finally allowed him access to reading material as well as television and written correspondence.

However, prison authorities have continued to deny him access to fresh air and sunlight for the past five years,  only allowing him to exercise in an indoor hall. Authorities also continue to deny him access to his lawyer as well as to consular visits from the British authorities.

On 20 December 2021, an Emergency State Security Court (ESSC) convicted Alaa Abdel Fattah on charges including “spreading false news” and sentenced him to five years in prison following a grossly unfair trial in reprisal for his activism. Human rights lawyer Mohamed Baker and blogger Mohamed Radwan “Oxygen” were also convicted on similar charges and sentenced to four years in prison. On 19 July 2023, following sustained campaigning for his release, Mohamed Baker received a presidential pardon after nearly four years of arbitrary detention.

Background

Alaa Abdel Fattah is a prominent political activist and government critic who has been targeted for his role in the 2011 uprising. He is among thousands of individuals who continue to be arbitrarily detained without legal basis in Egypt solely for exercising their human rights and/ or following proceedings violating fair trial rights. 

Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s reactivation of the Presidential Pardons Committee (PPC) in April 2022, the Egyptian authorities released hundreds of individuals held for political reasons, including prominent activists, but Alaa Abdel Fattah was excluded from this process. Egyptian authorities continued to carry out arrests of actual or perceived critics amid an unrelenting crackdown on dissent.