He has since overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent. The former army chief became president in 2014 after leading the military ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi a year earlier. In a 2019 interview with the show 60 Minutes on broadcaster CBS, Sisi said there were no political prisoners in Egypt. Rights group say there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt facing brutal, unhygienic conditions and overcrowded cells. Pre-trial detention can last up to two years under Egyptian law, but in practice detainees are often kept waiting behind bars longer.Ībdel Fattah was arrested in the wake of rare night-time protests prompted by an exiled construction contractor calling for the removal of President Sisi on claims of corruption.īaqer and Ibrahim were also detained in a massive crackdown.Ībdel Fattah has spent most of the past decade in jail.Īhead of the trial, Egypt's foreign ministry lambasted the German government on Saturday for a statement calling for a "fair trial" and the release of the three dissidents.Ĭairo described the German foreign ministry's release as "a blatant and unjustified meddling in Egyptian internal affairs". They require final approval by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.Ībdel Fattah, a computer programmer, blogger and high-profile activist who mobilised youths in the 2011 uprising that unseated autocrat Hosni Mubarak, had been in pre-trial detention since September 2019. "The judge was too cowardly to even inform us," she said after the sentencing at the State Security Misdemeanours Court in the capital.Ī judicial source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the verdict and sentencing to AFP. "Alaa was sentenced to five years, Baqer four years and Mohamed Oxygen four years," his sister Mona Seif said on Twitter. Abdel Fattah, his lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer and the blogger Mohamed "Oxygen" Ibrahim were convicted of "broadcasting false news" in their trial in Cairo.
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