17 human rights workers sentenced to life in prison amid local, international condemnations

Thirty members of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) were sentenced to prison time ranging from five years to life on Sunday, lawyer Islam Salama told Mada Masr. Their sentences are final and cannot be appealed.

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights Director Hossam Bahgat described these penalties as the most severe ever to be levied against lawyers and human rights workers arrested for doing their work in Egypt.

The sentences come as the government’s human rights record faces scrutiny from the United Nations, whose Human Rights Committee held sessions last week to assess Egypt’s adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

According to Salama, the court sentenced 17 people to life in prison on Monday, three of them in person and 14 in absentia.

With a sparsity of evidence against the defendants, “acquittal should have been the only logical conclusion to the case,” said lawyers from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who were part of the defendants’ defense team.

Security forces detained most of the ECRF’s members in November 2018 in a sweeping arrest campaign that UN bodies described at the time as “arbitrary.” The ECRF has since ceased its work documenting and reporting on human rights violations and conducting studies and research.

During their four years in detention awaiting trial — long over the legal upper limit on remand detention —  the ECRF members were subjected to numerous violations, including physical abuse, torture and medical negligence, according to records kept by local and international NGOs and referenced in a joint press statement published on Saturday before the ruling.

Former ECRF director Ezzat Taha Ghoneim was forcibly disappeared for three days after his arrest and later forced to appear in a video published by the Interior Ministry in which he showed signs of stress or torture, said the rights organizations.

Ghoneim and lawyer Mohamed Abu Huraira Mohamed Abdel Rahman were issued 15-year sentences on Monday, according to Salama.

Though court orders for Ghoneim’s release were issued multiple times during his period of detention, the prosecution circulated him through multiple open investigations — a common judicial practice known as “rotation” and used to keep detainees in prison without trial beyond the legally determined time spans.

An Emergency State Security Criminal Court, whose rulings cannot be appealed, sentenced the detainees on Monday, bringing an end to a nearly 30-month trial by upholding convictions of “assuming leadership of a terrorist group, joining a terrorist group and promoting the ideas of the group using the social networking accounts of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms.”

Ten-year sentences were issued on Monday against four people, including Aisha al-Shater, daughter of former Muslim Brotherhood senior official Khairat al-Shater, who was kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time and denied visits and health care, said the rights organizations.

Five-year sentences were handed to former member of the National Council for Human Rights Hoda Abdel Moneim Abdel Aziz and to Ahmed Maatouq Salam, said Salama.

Abdel Moneim was denied visits and necessary health care during her time in remand detention, which caused her serious health problems, including kidney failure and heart attacks that required her immediate transfer to a hospital.

The case and trial were replete with legal violations, the rights organizations added. Authorities investigated and interrogated the defendants in the absence of their lawyers, prevented their relatives from attending the sessions and denied lawyers access to the case files during the investigation, said the organizations. The statement also pointed to the prolonged detention of the defendants in remand, noting that the authorities also subjected them to various human rights violations, including physical abuse, torture and medical negligence.

The mass sentencing comes as the government has recently tried to showcase a cleaner image regarding its approach to human rights, launching a national strategy for human rights, reactivating the presidential amnesty committee and rebranding its massive prison complexes as “rehabilitation centers.” Egypt’s record has nevertheless continued to be the subject of consistent criticism by international rights organizations and governments, with a UN report expected later this month following its most recent review of Cairo’s performance.

Those sentenced to life in prison were Ibrahim al-Sayed Mohamed Abdo Atta, Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamed Nasrallah and Hashem Mohamed Mohamed Farrag, while the 14 who received life sentences in absentia were Mahmoud Hussein Ahmed Hassan, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab Abdel-Fattah, Ahmed Salah Eddin Ahmed Talaat, Hajar Khaled Fares al-Sayed, Ashraf Refaat Abdel-Hamid al-Zayyat, Al-Moatassem Billah Mohamed Abdel Jawad, Ibrahim Ramadan Abdel Fattah, Abdel Rehim Mohamed Abdel Rehim, Fekry Mohamed Fekry Abdel Halim, Soha Salama Omar al-Sheikh, Mohamed Saeed al-Shimy Ali, Israa Kamal Eddin Mohamed Attia, Ahmed Abdel Basset Mohamed Mohamed and Mohamed Abdel Rehim Mohamed Abdel Rehim.

Ten-year sentences were issued to former Dentists Syndicate deputy Mohamed Ismail Hassan al-Hudhaiby, Bahaa Mohamed Odah and Sumayya Nassef.

Receiving seven-year sentences were Ahmed Ismail Hassan al-Hudhaiby, Osama Ibrahim Ahmed Marei, Osama Mabrouk Moussa Mohamed, Tarek Mohamed Amin Abdel Fattah, Mohamed Abdel Sattar Mohamed Hassan.