Egypt: Activists Convicted By Emergency Court
Mohamed Baker and Alaa Abdel Fattah have been detained since 29 September 2019 pending investigations into charges of “joining a terrorist group”, “funding a terrorist group”, “disseminating false news undermining national security” and “us[ing] social media to commit a publishing offence” under Case No.1356/2019 of the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), a branch of the Public Prosecution specialized in investigating national security threats. The SSSP opened investigations against them into similar charges under new Case No. 1228/2021 as part of a strategy increasingly used by the authorities, referred to as "rotation", to circumvent the two-year limit for pre-trial detention allowed under Egyptian law and indefinitely extend the detention of activists.
The trial of Alaa Abdel Fattah and Mohamed Baker in Case No. 1228/2021 started on 28 October 2021, together with another defendant: blogger and activist Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan “Oxygen”, who was also convicted on charges of “spreading false news” in relation to social media posts and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. The verdict was not announced by the judge in the presence of defendants, families and lawyers as is the norm. Rather, a court clerk abruptly delivered the verdict to the few lawyers still present in the courtroom. Since October 2021, the authorities referred at least 20 activists, journalists and politicians to trial by Emergency State Security Courts (ESSC). On 22 June 2021, researcher and graduate student Ahmed Samir Santawy was convicted of “spreading false news from outside the country about the internal situation” and sentenced to four years by an emergency court, on the basis of social media posts he denied authoring. On 17 November 2021, former parliamentarian Zyad el-Elaimy was sentenced to five years in prison, while journalists Hisham Fouad and Hossam Moanis to four years’ imprisonment, for sharing social media posts and other content critical of Egypt’s human rights record and economic policy. They were convicted of “spreading false news to undermine national security”. On 23 August 2021, the SSSP referred human rights lawyer Hoda Abdelmoniem, human rights defender and founder of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, Ezzat Ghoniem, and 29 others to trial in front of an ESSC on charges of disseminating “false news” about human rights abuses by security forces through a Facebook page and various terrorism-related charges.
Alaa Abdel Fattah and Mohamed Baker are held in inhumane conditions at the Tora Maximum Security 2 Prison, in Cairo. Prison authorities hold them in small, poorly ventilated cells and have denied them beds and mattresses. Unlike other prisoners, they are prohibited from exercising in the prison yard and are not allowed to use the prison library nor to receive books or newspapers from outside prison at their own expense. The prison authorities have also been denying them adequate clothing, radios, watches, access to hot water and any personal belongings, including family photos. Mohamed Baker informed his wife during a prison visit that as a result of limited movement and poor prison conditions, he developed pain in his joints and muscles. The families of Mohamed Baker and Alaa Abdel Fattah have lodged official complaints about their treatment in prison, including their exclusion from the Covid-19 vaccine rollout amid concerns that detainees are being transferred from prisons to courts without personal protective equipment (PPE) and held in cramped unhygienic conditions. No information has been made available on the status on their complaints. On 13 September 2021, Alaa Abdel Fattah's lawyer and family publicly raised the alarm about him being in “imminent danger” and expressed concerns that he may be suicidal, noting that the horrid conditions of detention were having a detrimental impact on his mental health.
On 23 November 2020, the Official Gazette published the decision of the Cairo Criminal Court to include Mohamed Baker and Alaa Abdel Fattah to the “terrorists list” for five years without any due process as part of case No. 1781/2019 by the SSSP. Mohamed Baker and his lawyers were not aware that he was also under investigation in case No. 1781/2019 until the publication of the decision, and he has never been questioned by the SSSP in relation to that case or provided with information about the exact charges against him.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a well-known political activist and government critic, has been repeatedly arrested in recent years including for his role in the 2011 uprising. Mohamed Baker is a human rights lawyer and director of Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms, which he founded in 2014. They are among thousands of people detained arbitrarily in Egypt for peacefully exercising their human rights or following grossly unfair trials, including mass and military trials.