In rare move, court orders release of 460 detainees held in remand detention

In a rare move, the Cairo Criminal Court on Tuesday ordered the release of 460 detainees held in remand detention in 19 different cases, according to lawyer Khaled Ali.

The detainees, all released with as-yet-unspecified parole measures, include over 300 defendants who were arrested in connection with the September 2019 demonstrations and ordered into remand detention by the State Security Prosecution. That leaves around 70 of the September 2019 detainees in custody, Ali later wrote on his Facebook page.

The arrest sweep in September 2019 was the largest of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s presidency with over 4,000 people detained, including many minors, as part of a crackdown on the anti-Sisi protests on September 20 that were called for by former army contractor Mohamed Ali.

Among those ordered released on Tuesday is journalist Haitham Mahjoub, who was arrested six months ago, according to Ahmed Abdel Latif, a lawyer with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. Blogger Mohamed Ibrahim — known as Mohamed Oxygen — was also ordered released, according to lawyer Nabih al-Ganady, as was journalist Sayed Abdella, according to  Journalists Syndicate council member Mohamed Saad Abdel Hafeez. Both Oxygen and Abdalla were arrested in September 2019. Also included in the release order was political activist Sameh Saudi, according to Ganady.

While the release order was the largest of its kind in recent years with respect to political prisoners, Tuesday’s decision is not final since the State Security Prosecution has the right to appeal the order within 48 hours of its issuance.

Meanwhile, the news was not all positive for detainees on Tuesday. The Mansoura Criminal Court renewed the remand detention of activist and April 6 Youth Movement co-founder Mohamed Adel for 45 days, according to Ganady. Adel was arrested in June 2018 from the police station where he was serving probation and has been held in remand detention ever since, despite crossing the maximum two-year threshold for defendants to be held in remand under the penal code.

In separate news related to Egypt’s criminal justice system, authorities carried out 53 death sentences in the month of October alone, according to a statement by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) on Tuesday.

October’s figure represents the largest number of death sentences to be carried out in one month in the last five years, EIPR said.

According to EIPR, the executions represents the latest development in a worrying trend over the past three years of a “steady increase in the number of cases that end with a death sentence and in the number of people who are sentenced to death in single cases, as well as the total number of death sentences issued by Egyptian courts in one year.”

The group has repeatedly called on Egyptian authorities to end the practice and to sign and ratify the second optional protocol of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which seeks a moratorium on the death penalty.

“Despite a global trend toward ending the death penalty, demonstrated by various forums acting to this end, the official position of the Egyptian government is to encourage the persistence of capital punishment,” EIPR said in a 2017 statement.

More than 100 crimes are punishable by death under Egyptian law.