Conviction of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, icon of the 2011 revolution: “No one is safe in Egypt”

Published on : 12/21/2021 – 7:10 PM

“I am not surprised by this judgment, I did not expect better”, confides Laila Soueif, the mother of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, questioned on the Arab antenna of France 24, after the conviction of her son to five years in prison by an exceptional Cairo court for “spreading false information”. A judgment that cannot be appealed.

Icon of the 2011 revolt against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, political activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a computer programmer by profession, was prosecuted for sharing a tweet about the suspicious death of a detainee. He had been in pre-trial detention for over two years. In total, since 2013, he has spent seven years in prison.

Placed on the Cairo “terrorist” list at the end of 2020, he was sentenced on December 20, along with two other activists: his former lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer, and blogger Mohamed Ibrahim, alias Oxygen, also for “spreading false information “.

“I am angry because these are not judicial convictions, they are rather political decisions”, continues the mother of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who recalls that the lawyers could not even obtain a copy of the indictment.

And to add: “My son suffers morally because he has been under pressure for more than two years, since he was detained. He is deprived of reading, radio, and he is not allowed to take walks, it is a form of torture “.

“No opposition or dissent”

Since coming to power, after the dismissal of President Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been in the sights of human rights NGOs who denounce his policy of repression against demonstrators and opponents. According to them, the country has more than 60,000 prisoners of conscience.

“This case shows that no one is immune in Egypt, when it comes to politics or even the expression of disagreement, and whatever their notoriety, as the case of Alaa demonstrates. Abdel-Fattah, explains Farid Farid, AFP correspondent in Cairo, to France 24. He is one of the most famous political prisoners in the country who is still perceived by his supporters, and those who mobilized there. ten years ago, as a symbol and as the incarnation of one of the last flames of the revolution “.

“The message is always very clear: the Egyptian authorities will not tolerate any opposition or dissent in the country, underlines for his part Hussein Baoumi, researcher on Egypt and Libya at Amnesty International, interviewed by France 24. Anyone who dares to criticize the power , or evoke the question of human rights, will be condemned at the end of an unfair trial and detained in inhuman conditions for several years, like Alaa Abdel-Fattah and his companions “.

“A climate of impunity”

In a press release published Monday evening, several Egyptian human rights organizations have qualified as “scandalous” the conviction of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, not without asking President Sisi to quash a judgment which “proves the continuation of the hostile policy of the Egyptian government against human rights “.

These NGOs are relying on this decision to joke about the “national strategy for human rights”. A five-year plan announced by President Sisi on September 11, and whose objective is to “strengthen and further respect all civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights”.

In a report published on November 15, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies had pilloried the decision to entrust this “national strategy” to a committee under the … Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The strategy is not addressed to the Egyptians, but rather to fool the international community by launching a false reform process, it was logical to instruct this ministry to prepare it”, it is written in the report.

For the time being, on the ground, the situation continues to deteriorate, indicates Hussein Baoumi. The latter affirms that his NGO has recently observed an increase in human rights violations in the country.

“There are more and more cases of torture and enforced disappearances, as well as death sentences after unfair trials, all in a climate of impunity, in which the authorities and officials are completely immune. against any kind of liability, ”he concludes.