79 people released from pretrial detention, National Dialogue thanks Sisi

Seventy-nine people who were being held in remand detention were granted release orders on Monday by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, lawyers and rights organizations announced.

Those set for release include activists arrested in relation to expressing support for Palestine, whose arrests captured substantial public attention, and who were held in detention facilities for several months without any apparent move toward release or trial.

Yet the decision also tailed the arrest and detention of two journalists within the past week alone.

Prosecuting authorities have issued mass release decisions periodically over recent years as politicians and public figures made demands for authorities to cease the use of remand detention as a tool to keep political opponents jailed for extended periods.

Four university students detained after co-founding the Students for Palestine group are among those set to be released, said the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms in a Monday statement, naming them as  Zeyad al-Bassiouny, Mazen Ahmed, Mohamed Abdel Moneim and Mohamed Ibrahim Abdel Fattah.

Bassiouny and Ahmed, students at higher education institutions in Giza and Mansoura respectively, were arrested in May. Supporters organized popular campaigns immediately afterward to call for their releases.

Journalist Tamer Hendawy, who is also Bassiouny’s uncle, confirmed on Monday afternoon that his nephew was released from detention facilities and allowed to return home.

The other release decisions are expected to be implemented within the coming days, lawyer Khaled Ali told Mada Masr. The lawyer said that “the list of detainees that he received” and which he shared on social media also includes people who were detained in investigations that the prosecution opened over recent months into various political cases.

An ECRF lawyer told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity that all the detainees set for release were in custody pending cases opened during the past two years. Cases included some detained in an arrest campaign conducted in November 2022 amid calls for anti-government protests or for critical online posts made during that period, as well as people who were arrested in possession of gold bars while arriving from abroad or those charged with trading in foreign currency in the black market — two types of “arrest trends” emerging in 2023 at the height of the government’s efforts to counter the foreign currency crisis and control growing parallel currency markets.

Yet some detainees were less fortunate. Journalists Syndicate head Khaled al-Balshy highlighted the lack of journalist releases despite the syndicate’s “demands for the release of 21 colleagues.”

The syndicate head also pointed to the authorities’ arrest on Monday of Al-Manassa cartoonist and translator Ashraf Omar and to the State Security Prosecution’s order on Sunday to detain Arabic Post journalist Khaled Mamdouh Ibrahim for 15 days after he was forcibly disappeared for several days.

Journalists Syndicate member Hisham Fouad also noted to Mada Masr that the release list did not include any journalists.

“We are waiting for the number of imprisoned journalists to be reduced until this painful file is closed,” said Balshy.

A statement from the National Dialogue on Monday extended “all thanks and appreciation to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi responding to the political forces and releasing 79 detainees, which confirms His Excellency’s interest in this file.”

The statement also thanked the interior minister and public prosecutor for “the great effort they made to complete the procedures of releasing the 79 detainees in response to the board of trustees's appeal,” stressing that the releases will provide a positive atmosphere that will help the dialogue succeed. 

Newly appointed Parliamentary Affairs, Legal Affairs and Political Communication Minister Mahmoud Fawzy, who still holds a position in parallel as head of the technical secretariat of the National Dialogue, indicated in recent media statements that lists of “youth imprisoned” in relation to solidarity with Palestine were being prepared to be sent to the relevant authorities for consideration to qualify for accelerated release.

The National Dialogue, a state-sponsored initiative to foster discussions around political reform, was launched in 2022 alongside steps to revive the Presidential Amnesty Committee and the National Council for Human Rights as bodies advocating for prisoner releases, securing a number of mass release decisions from prosecuting authorities to date.

Yet opposition politicians inside and outside the dialogue sessions have said that release decisions are still slow and fail to match the pace of ongoing political arrests.

A National Dialogue session scheduled for Tuesday is set to discuss “the duration of pretrial detention, its alternatives, the position of pretrial detention in the case of multiple and recurring offenses, compensation for wrongful pretrial detention and travel ban measures related to pretrial detention,” according to a statement issued by the dialogue’s board of trustees, which indicated that it will submit the final recommendations of the session to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, accompanied by a list of detainees to “put under his watch.”