Imprisoned graduate student Ahmed Santawy ends hunger strike after 40 days

Graduate student Ahmed Samir Santawy ended at the start of August a hunger strike that lasted 40 days, which he began in protest of a four-year prison sentence he was handed by an emergency court on charges of publishing false news.

His brother, Abdel Rahman, told Mada Masr on Wednesday that Santawy’s family visited him in detention on Tuesday and found that he had ended his hunger strike after a prison doctor informed him that he had sustained severe damage to his stomach as a result of the strike and that continuing it could be life-threatening. Santawy’s family and lawyers also asked him to end the strike.

Santawy was sentenced on June 22 to four years in prison and fined LE500 on charges of “publishing false news from outside the country about internal affairs,” in an urgent trial before an Emergency State Security Court. Since the sentence is an emergency ruling, Santawy cannot pursue an ordinary appeals process.

His family have submitted a request for a pardon from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and are still seeking to file a grievance to rescind the ruling issued against his brother — the only recourse for emergency trial convictions.

Santawy has been imprisoned since February. He traveled to Egypt on December 23 on vacation from his master's degree at the Central European University in Austria and was questioned about a thesis he was researching on abortion and Islam upon arrival to Sharm el-Sheikh airport. His family home was raided by security forces in his absence on January 23 and he was summoned to present himself for questioning, which he did on February 1. On the same day, he was forcibly disappeared at a National Security Agency office in Cairo’s First Settlement.  Several days later, he was ordered into remand detention by the State Security Prosecution on charges of terrorism and spreading false news.  

His lawyer Nabih al-Genady told Mada Masr at the time that Santawy told the prosecution he was hit in the face repeatedly in detention in Cairo’s First Settlement, and that the security officers who were interrogating him asked him about his relationship with Ultras Ahlawy (an association of hardcore of Al-Ahly football club fans) and the Muslim Brotherhood, although Santawy insisted that he did not belong to either of the groups. 

In May, Santawy was added to a different case and referred to trial before the emergency court, where he was convicted and sentenced in an unusually speedy trial. He began a hunger strike after hearing the verdict.