The Guardian
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An Egyptian court has sentenced a prominent activist to five years in jail for violating a law that seeks to curtail demonstrations – legislation described as repressive by rights groups.
Alaa Abd El Fattah – a software engineer, blogger and activist – was one of the public faces of the 2011 popular uprising that removed Hosni Mubarak from power.
The verdict came in a retrial of 25 defendants who had previously been sentenced to 15 years over an unauthorised street protest in 2013. The remaining defendants in the case received sentences ranging from three to 15 years on Monday.
As the judge read out the sentences, the courtroom at Tora prison in Cairo erupted with outrage. The activists’ supporters climbed on wooden benches, chanting: “Down with military rule!”
Fattah and other prisoners appeared in the courtroom inside a metal and glass cage, unable to speak to their families, other activists, and journalists outside the glass.
The sentencing took less than 10 minutes. After the subsequent uproar, as police attempted to clear the crowd from the room, one man put his head down on a wooden table and sobbed. Tears streamed down the faces of several defendants’ relatives as they filed toward the gate.
“It’s not unexpected, but it still takes your breath away,” said Ahdaf Soueif, Fattah’s aunt, as she left the courtroom. “It’s not an issue of flaws. It’s an issue of inventing it as they go along. What is surprising is why they even bother with any kind of skeletal resemblance to proper process,” said Soueif, a prominent novelist and political commentator.
Those arrested were charged with violating a law introduced in 2013 that criminalised unsanctioned street protests.In November 2013, protesters assembled in Cairo outside the Shura council legislative chamber, calling on a constitution-drafting committee to ban military trials for civilians. Police used teargas and water cannon against protesters.
An appeal against Monday’s verdict is expected to be lodged in the court of cassation, Egypt’s highest appeals court.
Thousands of Egyptians have been detained in a clampdown on political opposition since Egypt’s military removed elected president Mohamed Morsi from power in July 2013.
The defendants in the case were initially fined and sentenced to 15 years in prison in June 2014. Monday’s verdict was the outcome of a retrial. The defendants, who were bailed after their initial arrest in November 2013, were arrested again at the outset of the retrial in October 2014.
Fattah is carrying out a partial hunger strike, consuming only juice and other fluids, according to Soueif.
The scion of a dissident family, Fattah emerged as a symbol of Egypt’s anti-authoritarian protest movement after he was detained for 45 days in 2006 following his arrest during a protest in support of the judicial independence movement. After moving to South Africa in 2008 he and his wife, Manal, returned to Egypt to join the 2011 uprising against Mubarak.
He was jailed again in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, missing the birth of his son. In 2013, under Islamist president Morsi, he faced charges that activists said were intended to silence dissent.
On Sunday Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi , the former armed forces chief who, backed by a wave of mass protests, led the military’s removal of Morsi in 2013, admitted in a televised speech that “some innocent youth may have been wrongfully imprisoned in the midst of events that unfolded in Egypt”.
According to a statement from the president’s office, Sisi “asked that a list of such youth be prepared with the intent that the first group of these youth be released shortly in accordance with the law.”
In the subsequent months, the military-backed government that supplanted Morsi carried out the deadliest political crackdown in Egypt’s recent history.
Earlier on Monday, the same court adjourned the trial of two al-Jazeera television journalists until 8 March. They are charged with aiding a terrorist organisation – a reference to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
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