Egypt Violates Own Law By Adding 2 Years to Alaa Abdelfattah's Prison Term

Daniel Finnan/RFI
Egypt's Constitutional Court
24 September 2024
Committee to Protect Journalists (New York)

Washington, D.C. — The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Egyptian authorities to release Alaa Abdelfattah, a prominent Egyptian-British blogger and writer, upon completion of his five-year prison sentence this Sunday, September 29. Abdelfattah was arrested on September 28, 2019, and in December 2021, he was sentenced to five years in prison, starting from his arrest date, on accusations of spreading false news and undermining state security.

"After serving his five-year sentence, Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abdelfattah must be released immediately, and all remaining charges against him must be dropped. He deserves to be reunited with his son and family," said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ's interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. "The Egyptian authorities must uphold their own laws and stop manipulating legal statutes to unjustly imprison Abdelfattah. It is a profound disgrace for Egypt to silence such a vital voice of conscience behind bars."

Abdelfattah's family and his campaign for release wrote on social media platform X, "We hope that the law will be respected and Alaa will be freed and reunited with his son, Khaled."

However, Abdelfattah's lawyer, Khaled Ali, told the independent media outlet Al-Manassa that Abdelfattah is "being subjected to abuse, oppression, and manipulation of legal texts." Ali said prosecutors calculated the start of the sentence from the date it was ratified on January 3, 2022 -- not from the date of his arrest -- which means Abdelfattah's release date is now set for January 2027.

Egyptian authorities' failure to release Abdelfattah by September 29 would be in violation of articles 482 and 484 of the country's Criminal Procedure Law.

In April 2024, CPJ and 26 other press freedom and human rights organizations sent a letter to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) urging the UNWGAD to determine whether Abdelfattah's detention is arbitrary and violates international law.

The 2019 arrest, which took place about six months after Abdelfattah was released after serving a previous five-year sentence, occurred amid a government crackdown on protests demanding that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi resign. Abdelfattah had posted about the protests and arrests on Facebook and wrote about politics and human rights violations for numerous outlets, including the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper and the progressive Mada Masr news website.

Read the original article on CPJ.

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