Lawsuit filed against public prosecutor by sister of activist Alaa Abd El Fattah ruled inadmissible by court

The family of imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah will not be able to sue Egypt’s public prosecutor for professional misconduct, the legal team that filed the case told Mada Masr on Monday.

The family says the prosecution failed to investigate nine complaints they submitted over a two-year period regarding incidents of abuse against Abd El Fattah and other detainees, while lawyer Gamal Eid, acting on their behalf, has described the case as an attempt toward legal accountability for the failure to investigate the incidents.

But the Cairo Court of Appeals ruled on Sunday that the case was inadmissible, and is yet to make public the details of why the case will not go forward, lawyers said.

Mona Seif, Abd El Fattah’s sister, sought earlier this year to press charges of serious professional misconduct against Public Prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy for what she says is Sawy’s failure to investigate any of nine complaints submitted by her family to his office regarding incidents of abuse her brother suffered or witnessed at the hands of prison authorities during more than a year and a half in detention.

When authorities brought Abd El Fattah to detention facilities following his September 2019 arrest, he was stripped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened by a National Security Agency officer who Abd El Fattah’s family has named as Ahmed Fekry. Abd El Fattah has also been deprived for long stretches of time of his right to exercise, receive books and correspond or meet with his family during prison visits. “Many prisoners suffer even worse conditions than Alaa’s – and he has been witness to serious crimes committed against them,” his family has said.

The lawsuit sought to bring legal action against Sawy as public prosecutor for misconduct, a legal pathway that experts described to Mada Masr as “rare.” This is the first lawsuit of its kind to dispute [the conduct] of the public prosecutor in person, former Court of Cassation Vice President Ahmed Abdel Rahman told Mada Masr when the case was filed. While judges or prosecution members can be prosecuted via filings, Abdel Rahman stated that Sawy himself does not conduct investigations, anticipating that the suit would not be successful.

Nevertheless, the legal team will seek to appeal the ruling once it is officially issued in a month’s time, said lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also acting in the case. “No one should be above the law.”

Lawyers awaiting the verdict, issued by the court on Sunday, were not allowed to review the ruling nor the reasoning behind it, said Radwa Ahmed, a lawyer representing Mona Seif in the suit. The court secretary only informed them of the decision verbally, promising they would be allowed to review the text within a few days, she added. 

Alaa Abd El Fattah was arrested in 2019 and remained in remand detention pending investigation into false news charges until the end of 2021, when he was sentenced to serve five years in prison. He began a hunger strike on April 2 to protest harsh prison conditions, including assault and abuse by prison authorities on multiple occasions since his arrest. 

He was transferred from a maximum-security prison in Tora Prison Complex to another complex in Wadi al-Natrun in May, about one month after being granted British citizenship. Abd El Fattah has officially requested that British authorities be allowed to visit him in prison and that he be allowed to communicate with the family’s lawyers in the UK.