Two minors sentenced to 10 years on terrorism charges linked to PUBG gaming

The Banha Juvenile Court sentenced on Tuesday two minors to 10 years in prison on terrorism-related charges stemming from their online gaming activity on popular video game PUBG, lawyer Osama Salama, who represents one of the defendants, told Mada Masr. 

The ruling followed a process that lacked “the minimum guarantees of a fair trial,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) stated yesterday.

During the first hearing on October 28, the court denied the defense’s request to obtain a copy of the case file, Salama, an EIPR lawyer and defense attorney for Mohamed Emad, 17, the second defendant in the case, told Mada Masr. Instead, he said, lawyers were only permitted a brief and partial review during the second hearing, held on November 18, during which the court scheduled the verdict for Tuesday.

According to Salama and the EIPR statement, Emad is charged with “joining a terrorist organization,” while the other defendant, Mohamed Ali Hamdan, 17, faces charges of “founding, leading and financing a terrorist organization.” The teens are also jointly charged with “participating in a criminal agreement to commit a terrorist crime.” 

Emad and Hamdan are the sole defendants in the case, a circumstance that, according to Salama, contradicts Article 1 of the 2015 anti-terror law, which defines a terrorist organization as “a group consisting of at least three persons.”

During the November hearing, the defense lawyers were taken by surprise when the prosecution cited “confessions” attributed to both teens that were not included in the case files reviewed by the attorneys, Salama said.

The lawyers were unable to ascertain the legality of the methods used to obtain these statements, or the extent of the physical and psychological duress to which the teens may have been subjected.

The case file accused the teens of publishing videos via Telegram and “made no mention of their participation in any game,” according to the lawyer. However, the teens told their families that they had joined a Telegram group while playing PUBG. “This pattern has become increasingly common in recent terrorism cases involving children,” Salama said.

The juvenile defendants were subjected to a range of violations from the moment of their arrest, the lawyer said. His client, a US-Egyptian national, was forcibly disappeared following his arrest on August 19, 2024 at his family home in Banha while vacationing in Egypt. He first appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution the following month, on September 5. 

The prosecution counted this period as lawful detention, citing Article 40 of the anti-terror law, which allows suspects to be held for up to 14 days prior to being brought before prosecutors, while disregarding Article 41 of the same law, which grants defendants the right to contact their families and consult a lawyer during the period of detention, according to Salama.

According to children’s rights organization Belady an Island for Humanity, National Security Agency forces raided Hamdan’s home in Fayoum on August 27 of last year and took him to an undisclosed location. He was likewise forcibly disappeared for ten days before appearing before the Supreme State Security Prosecution on September 7, 2024.

The organization noted that, “from the moment of his arrest until the issuance of the ruling, he endured nearly 16 months of detention, during which he was subjected to severe psychological pressure and held in inhumane conditions, based on charges rooted not in acts of real violence but in his use of video games.”

Salama said the prosecution only questioned his client once, and that the charges were based on “an investigation report prepared by a National Security officer.” He added that the two minors were transferred to the Supreme State Security Prosecution in New Cairo “instead of the juvenile prosecution,” despite there being no adult defendants in the case. This, he said, constituted a violation of the protections guaranteed to child defendants under Egypt’s laws.

According to the EIPR, the court “did not hear the children’s testimonies or their lawyers’ pleas, and ignored all requests by the defense.”

Meanwhile, Belady called for the teens’ release as well as “a serious review of the prison sentence handed down against them,” urging authorities to give them “a fair trial that respects children’s rights in accordance with international standards, with full adherence to protecting them from any form of torture or unlawful detention.”