Over the past few days, politicians and rights advocates launched a social media campaign calling for the release of political activist, blogger and programmer Alaa Abdel Fattah, as his five-year prison sentence in Case 1228 of 2021 expired on 29 September, and the campaign drew wide sympathy and solidarity among social media users.
The hopes of the family of Alaa, 42, have been dashed. He previously spent seven years in prison from 2013, when he was arrested and sentenced to five years on charges related to protesting without a permit, and was released after completing his sentence in 2019; but the security authorities arrested him again a few months later and the Public Prosecution ordered him held in pretrial detention, then the State Security Misdemeanour Court sentenced him in December 2021 to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news. His family had hoped he would be released at the end of his sentence, but because the pretrial detention period was not counted, he now has to spend more than two additional years in prison.
Human rights lawyer and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali announced that the Public Prosecutor had rejected a request to count activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s pretrial detention prior to the ratification of the sentence, stressing that Alaa will remain in prison until 3 January 2027.
In a post on his Facebook account yesterday, Monday, Khaled Ali said Alaa was supposed to leave prison today after serving five years. He added: “We found that the enforcement papers calculate the term from the date the sentence against him was ratified, on 3 January 2022, not from the date of his arrest on 29 September 2019. We submitted a request to the Public Prosecutor to count his pretrial detention prior to the ratification of the sentence, but the Public Prosecutor rejected the request, which means Alaa will remain in prison until 3 January 2027.”
Commenting, the human rights lawyer tells Zawia3: “When we obtained a certificate of the enforcement period a few days ago, we were surprised that the start of the sentence was calculated from the date of ratification of the sentence, 3 January 2022, and that the period before the ratification, from 29 September 2019 to 2 January 2022, was dropped from the calculation of the sentence served under this ruling, on the claim that it was in connection with the investigations in felony case No. 1356 of 2019 Supreme State Security, and that this case has not been disposed of, as the prosecution has neither decided to close it nor referred it to court.”
He explains that the law was not applied correctly in Alaa Abdel Fattah’s case, as Article 482 of the Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that: “The term of a custodial sentence begins from the day of the arrest of the convicted person on the basis of the enforceable ruling, taking into account its reduction by the periods of pretrial detention and arrest.” Article 484 of the Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that “where several custodial sentences are imposed on the accused, the period of pretrial detention shall be deducted from the lighter sentence”, according to Khaled Ali.
The human rights lawyer stresses that he has never before seen a case in which the procedures applied to Alaa Abdel Fattah were used, nor is it a case of recycling into new cases; no other court ruling has been issued against Alaa so far, and he has not been referred to any other trial. He noted that Sanaa Seif, Alaa’s sister, was in the same legal situation: she was arrested and accused of the same charges, namely joining, publishing and misusing social media; the publishing offences were separated out, she was tried for them as a misdemeanour and sentenced, served the sentence and was released, and her sentence was calculated from the date of her arrest, not the date of the ruling, even though the felony case is still under investigation and has not been disposed of.
Dropping the Pretrial Detention Period
Alaa Abdel Fattah’s family accuses the Egyptian authorities of refusing to release him despite his full sentence having expired. His sister Mona Seif announced in a video posted on social media on 29 September that her family had asked the Prison Authority when her brother would be released and were told it would be in January 2027, that is, after two years and three months, and that they had submitted a request to the Egyptian Public Prosecutor to count the first two years Alaa spent in pretrial detention towards his sentence and release him, but he rejected the request; this means serving seven years and three months in prison instead of five. She considered this a violation of the law, as the periods of pretrial detention, trial proceedings and the time between the verdict and its ratification were dropped from the term.
Seif said that the Egyptian state, with all its institutions, has decided to add a new crime to the series of crimes it has committed against her brother, namely not releasing him despite the expiry of the unjust sentence against him, and continuing to persecute and imprison him indefinitely. She explained that he had turned himself in on 29 September 2019 to serve his daily probation, but was held and did not leave in the morning, and was brought before the State Security Prosecution, which pursued him on several charges, including spreading false news and joining a terrorist group. He remained in pretrial detention for two years and two months while the prosecution investigated the charges against him, before he was referred to the Emergency Supreme State Security Prosecution, which questioned him on charges of spreading false news, and then to the Emergency State Security Misdemeanour Court, an exceptional court with no further levels of litigation such as cassation or appeal; the court sentenced him on 20 December 2021 to five years in prison.
Laila Soueif, university professor, political activist in the field of human rights and civil society, and Alaa Abdel Fattah’s mother, announced on Sunday that she had begun an open-ended hunger strike until the release of her son, whom she considers abducted by the Egyptian authorities since the sentence set by the court ruling has expired, accusing the British authorities of complicity with their Egyptian counterparts, since Alaa is a dual national; he obtained British citizenship while in prison in 2022.
Soueif said in a statement posted on her personal Facebook account: “My son Alaa Abdel Fattah was not released on 29 September 2024 after spending five years in prison, the sentence he was given. The official position of the Egyptian authorities now is that Alaa’s release date will be 3 January 2027, five years after the date his sentence was ratified, not five years after the date of his arrest.”
She added: “From today, 30 September 2024, I consider Alaa abducted and detained outside the law. From today I announce a total hunger strike until Alaa is released, in protest at the Egyptian authorities’ crime against my son and at the British authorities’ complicity with the Egyptian authorities in that crime. The Egyptian regime is an ally of the British government, not an adversary, and Alaa is a dual national; therefore his safety and respect for his rights are a shared responsibility of both states, Egypt and Britain.”
The hunger strike by Alaa Abdel Fattah’s mother comes as a last attempt after the family submitted more than one official request for a presidential pardon for him: one in June 2022, and a second on 11 November of the same year, when university professor Ahdaf Soueif, Abdel Fattah’s aunt, submitted a request delivered by hand to Ambassador Moushira Khattab, head of the National Council for Human Rights, so that she could send the pardon request through her office at the council, as his lawyer Khaled Ali explained the same day in a post on his Facebook account.
Laila Soueif explains, in press statements to Zawia3, that she did not expect her son to be released, because she has trained herself not to believe that any political prisoner will be released until they actually are, and in Alaa’s case specifically, the prison ticket clearly stated that his release date would be 3 January 2027, because the pretrial detention period was not counted towards the sentence. She confirmed that the family submitted requests to the Public Prosecutor to correct this situation, but learned on Thursday 26 September that their request had been rejected.
She says: “In my opinion, Alaa’s imprisonment is illegal; I consider him abducted and detained outside the law. The argument the prosecution put forward, claiming that the pretrial detention period was in connection with a different case file from the case in which he was sentenced, and that the second file is still open and has not been closed by the prosecution, so they cannot add the pretrial detention he served to the sentence, is an empty argument, because he was tried on part of the charges in the file for which he was detained, and it was the prosecution that decided to try him on part of the charges and leave the rest pending, with the file still open five years after the referral to trial. Also, when Alaa’s sister Sanaa was arrested and tried, the same thing happened to her: a case file with a number and charges, then a case with part of the charges and a new number, yet her prison term was calculated from the day of her arrest.” She asks: “Why do the authorities insist on persecuting my son?”
Regarding the presidential pardon requests submitted by Alaa’s family, Soueif reveals that they were told the pardon committee had recommended Alaa’s release, but its opinion is advisory and it is not the decision-maker. She adds: “Despite the enormity of what is happening to our family, there are thousands of families in Egypt to whom much worse is happening, so I feel embarrassed even talking about our human suffering because of my son Alaa’s imprisonment.”
The Authorities’ Exploitation of Legal Tools
Alaa’s continued imprisonment has prompted human rights organisations and institutions to express solidarity with him and demand his release. Amnesty International said that prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah had today completed his unjust prison sentence, imposed merely for exercising his human rights, calling, in a post on its “X” account on Saturday, on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to end this injustice and release him immediately.
The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression condemned, in a statement on Saturday, the Egyptian authorities’ refusal to release activist Alaa Abdel Fattah despite the expiry of his five-year sentence, which was due to end that day, demanding that the Egyptian authorities release him immediately and stop the ongoing persecution of him for expressing critical views.
The association considered that this incident comes at a time of growing concern about the continuation of security practices of pursuing and arresting citizens for expressing their opinions, in addition to keeping thousands of male and female citizens in pretrial detention for years as punishment for their critical views.
Ahmed Osman, a lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, stresses to Zawia3 that not counting activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s pretrial detention period is illegal and violates the Criminal Procedure Law, describing it as a new procedure invented by the Public Prosecution, since what is legally applied in various cases is that a prison sentence is calculated from the moment the defendant is arrested, through the period of pretrial detention and the litigation procedures.
Osman explains that the illegal procedure applied to Alaa had previously been applied to blogger Mohamed Oxygen, imprisoned with him in the same case on charges of spreading false news.
In the same context, Ahmed El-Attar, executive director of the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, describes what is happening to activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, detained for more than five years, as nothing new for the Egyptian authorities, considering it a clear example of the ongoing approach the authorities follow in dealing with political detainees, affirming the network’s full solidarity with Alaa Abdel Fattah and all political detainees who have been deprived of their right to release after their sentences ended, and calling for their immediate release.
El-Attar says, in exclusive statements to Zawia3, that Alaa is not the first; others preceded him, such as Ambassador Mohamed Refaa El-Tahtawy, detained since July 2013, Mahmoud Shaaban and others whose sentences have fully ended without their being released. He accuses the Egyptian authorities of exploiting legal tools and procedures by the State Security Prosecution to keep these detainees imprisoned after the end of their sentences, through wordplay and the cloning of new cases from the original case in which they were held in pretrial detention for years, thereby ensuring that this period is not counted towards the sentence imposed by the court, as happened with Alaa, or through new charges and procedures known as case recycling, which allows detainees to be kept behind bars for as long as possible.
For his part, Court of Cassation lawyer Tarek El-Awady, a member of the Presidential Pardon Committee, appealed to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to use his constitutional powers to issue a presidential pardon for Alaa, because of the difficult circumstances he has gone through during his long imprisonment, which call for a different view from the state.
El-Awady said in a statement on Tuesday that Alaa, regardless of his political views, is an Egyptian citizen with rights and duties, and the past years have proven that his imprisonment has not served the public interest but has increased polarisation in society, adding that releasing Alaa Abdel Fattah and others held in opinion cases would be a positive step towards national reconciliation and strengthening unity among the nation’s people, and a confirmation of what has been repeatedly announced, that Egypt is a homeland for all and that a difference of opinion does not spoil the homeland.
Recycling
Rights advocates believe that what happened to Alaa cannot be separated from another systematic series of practices and violations carried out by the Egyptian security authorities to detain and persecute opponents of the current regime after the events of 3 July 2013, for indefinite periods according to the security authorities’ vision, without abiding by judicial decisions and rulings, as an extension of practices that served the same purpose before the 25 January 2011 revolution but using new mechanisms, according to a report by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
The report, issued in December 2021, defined case or arrest recycling as instances of re-detaining people who have been ordered released after their sentence ended, granted a release decision or acquitted, accusing the Egyptian authorities of using this practice to a limited extent between 2016 and 2018, then expanding its use to reach a peak by 2020, and saying it is still continuing despite repeated demands by human rights organisations to release defendants not involved in violence.
According to a report by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, between December 2023 and January 2024 two new cases of recycling were recorded, of detainees who were investigated on fabricated charges after their detention ended and the sentences previously imposed on them by criminal courts expired, in addition to at least 251 defendants it said were recycled into new cases during 2023, and 620 other defendants in 2022.
According to the report, issued in February 2024, the most prominent political prisoners subjected to recycling into new cases after their sentences ended include rights advocate Hoda Abdelmoniem, who was recycled in October 2023 after being investigated in a new case as soon as she completed her five-year prison sentence in Case No. 1552 of 2018 Emergency Supreme State Security, known in the media as the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms case. Mohamed El-Kassas, deputy head of the Strong Egypt Party, has also been recycled since February 2018 into three cases based on secret security investigations, the latest being Case No. 1059 of 2021 Emergency State Security Felonies, in which the court sentenced him to ten years in prison in May 2022.
The report explains that rights advocate Ibrahim Metwally, detained since September 2017, had been granted release in two cases on the same charges, while he is now held pending investigation in a third case, No. 786 of 2020, on charges of leading a group established in violation of the law and spreading false news and data. The head of the Zamalek club supporters’ association, Sayed Ali Fahim, known as “Sayed Moshagheb”, detained since March 2015, was also recycled on 2 January 2024 into a new case, No. 910 of 2021 Supreme State Security, in which the prosecution charged him with joining an illegal group and spreading false news, after he had completed his seven-year prison sentence in Case No. 1107 of 2015, known in the media as the Air Defence Stadium events case.
While legal experts believe that not counting activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s pretrial detention is illegal, human rights circles in general believe that releasing Alaa Abdel Fattah and others held in opinion cases is a guarantee through which the authorities could prove their seriousness about national reconciliation, the National Dialogue and political reform in Egypt.
