Mansoura University student gets 5-year jail term for terrorism charges

Engineering student Nizar Yasser Abdel Rahman was convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to five years in prison by a Mansoura court on Thursday, reported the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA).

Rahman and 11 others were arrested in October during clashes between security forces and Mansoura University students identified as Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

He was charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, inciting violence, rioting, vandalizing university property, attacking police forces, attempting to storm the university’s administrative building and attempting to take security guards hostage.

Since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi last July, universities have been transformed into the site of bloody confrontations between student groups and police forces, as the larger battle between the Brotherhood and the military played itself out most fervently on campuses nationwide.

At least 13 students have been killed, dozens injured and hundreds detained in these incidents, which the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) called the worst crackdown on university freedoms in the last 70 years.

Mansoura and Al-Azhar Universities have been hit by some of the worst confrontations between students and police forces, as well as between pro- and anti-military students.

In June, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced 14 Al-Azhar University students to seven years in a maximum security prison for acts of violence committed on campus, while 36 others in the same university were sentenced to four years in prison on May for similar charges.