Egypt: Prominent Activist Risks Indefinite Detention
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a well-known political activist and government critic, has been repeatedly arrested during the past decade including for his role in the 2011 uprising. On 29 September 2019, National Security Agency (NSA) officers arrested him from Dokki police station in Greater Cairo, where he was forced to spend 12 hours every night following his release on probation in March 2019, after having served another unjust five-year prison sentence. Later that day human rights lawyer Mohamed Baker, was arrested from a prosecution office while attending the investigation session of his client Alaa Abdel Fattah. Alaa Abdel Fattah and Mohamed Baker were ordered into pre-trial detention pending investigations into bogus terrorism-related charges under Case No.1356/2019 of the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), a branch of the Public Prosecution specialized in investigating national security threats.
The SSSP opened investigations into similar charges against them under new Case No. 1228/2021 as part of a strategy increasingly used by the authorities, referred to as "rotation", to circumvent the two-year limit for pre-trial detention allowed under Egyptian law and to indefinitely extend the detention of activists. Their trial in Case No. 1228/2021 started on 28 October 2021, together with another defendant: blogger and activist Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan “Oxygen”. Mohamed Baker and “Oxygen” were convicted on charges of “spreading false news” in relation to social media posts and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Proceedings before emergency courts are inherently unfair as their verdicts are not subject to appeal by a higher tribunal. Defence lawyers were prevented from communicating with defendants in private and photocopying the casefiles and indictments.
Alaa Abdel Fattah was held in inhumane conditions at the Tora Maximum Security 2 Prison, in Cairo from September 2019 to May 2022. Prison authorities held him in a small, poorly ventilated cell and have denied him a bed and mattress. The prison authorities also denied him reading materials, exercise in the prison yard, adequate clothing, radios, watches, access to hot water and any personal belongings, including family photos. On 12 May 2022, Alaa Abdel Fattah told his mother that he was beaten while handcuffed by the deputy prison warden at Tora Maximum Security 2 prison. On 18 May 2022, he was transferred to Wadi al-Natroun Prison after significant public pressure.
On 19 July 2023, following sustained supporter mobilization Mohamed Baker received a presidential pardon after nearly four years of arbitrary detention stemming solely from his human rights work. Since the President’s reactivation of the Presidential Pardons Committee in April 2022, the Egyptian authorities released high-profile prisoners of conscience and hundreds of others held for political reasons. However, thousands remain arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their human rights, or following grossly unfair trials, or without legal basis.
During UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), a chorus of voices called on the Egyptian authorities to release Alaa Abdel Fattah who was on hunger strike for seven months when the event started on 6 November 2022. For instance, on 8 November, expressing deep regret at his ongoing detention, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called for his immediate release and urged the authorities to provide him with the necessary healthcare. Alaa Abdel Fattah began his hunger strike on 2 April 2022 to protest his unjust imprisonment and denial of consular visits. On 1 November 2022, he escalated his hunger strike and stopped consuming the 100 calories he had been consuming since April and on 6 November 2022 he stopped drinking water. On 11 November 2022, Alaa Abdel Fattah lost consciousness in the shower, and when he regained it, he was held by a cellmate, surrounded by a large crowd and had a tube inserted into his body. Following this near-death experience, he decided not to resume his hunger strike immediately, but vowed to continue if “there continues to be no real movement on his case”.
On 24 March 2023, the UN Human Rights Committee published its concluding observations on Egypt’s compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights highlighting several issues raised since 2013 by Amnesty International and other Egyptian and international human rights groups, including arbitrary detention and abuse of counterterrorism legislation to silence actual or perceived critics of the Egyptian authorities.
On 14 November 2023, Alaa Abdel Fattah’s family have filed an urgent appeal with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over his continuing and unjust imprisonment.