Mahienour al-Massry trial verdict due on July 20

Award-winning human rights lawyer and leftist activist Mahienour al-Massry will remain in jail till July 20, when a final verdict is due on her case, a court in Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria, ruled today.

Amro Ali, who was at the court, said via social networking site Twitter that Massry repeatedly chanted “revolution till victory” as she was being taken away, following the judge’s ruling.

The court heard an appeal today for Massry’s case. She was put in jail in May along with six others over a protest last year outside a court trying two policemen accused of the killing of a young man, Khaled Saeed, whose death in 2010 helped spark the uprising in early 2011 against then-President Hosni Mubarak.

Since her detention, she has won the French 2014 Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize, given annually to a lawyer for contributions to the defence of human rights. The first award in 1985 was given to South African leader Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment.

Former presidential candidate Khaled Ali, a leftist lawyer known for working on social justice issues, is part of the defence team and was present at court today for the appeal. He focused his argument on the unconstitutionality of the Protest Law, under which Massry and many others are in jail, according Tarek Mokhtar, a doctor and close friend of Massry who was tweeting from the court.

Ali is appealing the constitutionality of the Protest Law, passed in November by former interim president Adly Mansour, in Egypt’s law courts. The law requires police permission to conduct a protest and imposes heavy fines and prison sentences to whoever oppose it.

Local and international human rights groups have criticized the law. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the law shows that Egypt’s post-June 30 government’s goal is to sharply restrict peaceful assembly and to let security forces shut down protests forcibly, at will.

There have been at least 16,000 people officially arrested since the end of June last year, and up to 40,000 according to activist figures, when the military ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi, after a mass wave of protests calling on him to resign. There has since been a heavy crackdown on Islamists and secular activists.