Court upholds activists’ three-year sentences

The Abdeen Misdemeanors Court upheld the three-year sentences handed down to Ahmed Maher, Mohamed Adel and Ahmed Douma, three high-profile activists accused of violating the contentious Protest Law.

The court rejected an appeal against the three-year prison sentences and the fine of LE50,000 that was handed down to the activists last December in a speedy trial that lasted less than a month, state media reported.

Maher and Adel, members of the April 6 Youth Movement, and Douma, were found guilty of crimes under the Protest Law, which criminalizes political gatherings of more than ten people not authorized by the police.

Mahmoud Belal, lawyer with the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, told Mada Masr that the verdict is final but that they can file an appeal at the Court of Cassation.

He said, however, that this process may take up to two or three years, by which time they would have completed their sentences anyway.

Belal said that the verdict is purely “political,” and is far from what the law stipulates.

“These are State Security officers dressed as judges,” he said, “they are not following the law so there is no way for us to approach this case.”

He maintained that the verdict is irrelevant to the case.

The Abdeen Misdemeanors Court had found the three men guilty of attacking the police and police property, using force against the police and protesting in violation of the provisions of the Protest Law and Thuggery Law.

The charges relate to skirmishes that broke out outside the Abdeen Courthouse at the end of November, when Maher went to turn himself in pursuant to a summons he had received following a demonstration outside the Shura Council on November 26, 2013, which was violently broken up by the police. 

Commenting on the issue, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division said, “Today’s verdict against three of the most recognized faces of the January 25, 2011, protests is one more nail in the coffin for Egypt’s revolution.”

“The appeals court has failed to undo the worst excesses of the government’s campaign to crush dissent,” she added.

Moreover, the Freedom for the Brave campaign issued a statement condemning the verdict, saying it contradicts “all reason and logic.”

“The witnesses’ testimonies presented by the prosecution are contradictory and the video that is supposed to prove that Adel assaulted police officers clearly only shows him handing juice boxes and water bottles to an officer when he was suffocating from the tear gas,” the statement said.

The campaign added that this verdict is one among many political verdicts that stem from a “repressive and controversial law,” referring to the Protest Law.

The statement called on annulling the law, arguing that keeping it under the pretext of fighting terrorism is “political fraud.”

“Keeping this law in place means detaining more young people who have done nothing but use a right guaranteed to them by the constitution, which is peacefully protesting,” the statement read.