Egypt: Alaa Abd el-Fattah must be released at the end of his prison sentence

Civic Space 6 min read
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Egypt: Alaa Abd el-Fattah must be released at the end of his prison sentence - Civic Space

ARTICLE 19 joins 58 Egyptian and international civil society organisations in calling on Egypt to immediately release the Egyptian-British writer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, when his five year prison sentence ends on Sunday 29 September, in accordance with Egyptian law. 

The organisations expressed their deep alarm at news, shared by his lawyer, that the Egyptian authorities do not plan to release Alaa until January 2027.

Not releasing Alaa on 29 September would represent a violation of Article 482 of the Egyptian Code of Criminal Procedure, which stipulates that the period of a custodial sentence begins “from the day of the arrest of the convict… taking into account its reduction by the amount of pretrial detention periods and the period of arrest.”

Egyptian law requires that time served in pretrial detention is deducted from prison sentences. Alaa’s sister, Sanaa Seif, was released at the end of an 18 month prison sentence in 2021, after the authorities deducted the time she had served waiting for her trial.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been imprisoned almost continuously since 2014. His most recent period of detention began on 28 September 2019, while he was briefly on probationary release from a previous conviction. He was ordered into pretrial detention pending investigations into bogus terrorism-related charges. In December 2021, after a trial that UN experts judged to be unfair, a court handed him a five year prison sentence for “spreading false news”, simply for sharing a Facebook post about torture. In 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for his immediate release. UN human rights experts have also called for the release of blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim Radwan, sentenced alongside Alaa to four years in prison. “Oxygen” has been held in solitary confinement since 2023.

Khaled Ali, Alaa’s lawyer, has stated that the Egyptian authorities are attempting to justify their refusal to release Alaa until 2027 by citing the original spurious terrorism investigation that predated his trial. In reality, however, the case in which Alaa was ultimately sentenced was ultimately derived from this investigation; the Egyptian authorities copied a number of the same exact charges from the original terrorism case and crafted the second case in which Alaa was sentenced. Creating a false distinction between the two cases, authorities are now alleging that time spent in pretrial detention applies under the first case, but not the second.

Regardless of this legal fallacy, Egyptian authorities’ analysis of the situation is improper. Failing to release Alaa would also be in violation of Article 484 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which stipulates that pretrial detention be deducted in the event of multiple cases.

The civil society organisations are calling on Egypt’s international partners to urgently raise Alaa’s case with their counterparts, and to call for his immediate release, in line with Egyptian legal requirements.

 Full list of signatory organisations

  1. Access Now
  2. African Middle Eastern Leadership Project (AMEL)
  3. ALQST for Human Rights
  4. ANKH Association (Arab Network for Knowledge about Human Rights)
  5. ARTICLE19
  6. Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)
  7. Association for Farmers Rights Defense (AFRD)
  8. Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
  9. Bahrain Press Association
  10. BlueLink Foundation
  11. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
  12. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
  13. Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu)
  14. Derechos Digitales
  15. Eco forum Zenica
  16. Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms
  17. Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR)
  18. Egyptian Human Rights Forum (EHRF)
  19. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)
  20. EgyptWide for Human Rights
  21. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
  22. El Nadeem Center against Violence and Torture
  23. EuroMed Rights
  24. FairSquare
  25. Freedom Now
  26. Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
  27. GreenNet
  28. Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
  29. Human Rights First
  30. HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement
  31. INSM
  32. Institute for Policy Studies Climate Policy Program
  33. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
  34. International Press Institute (IPI)
  35. International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
  36. Intersection Association for Rights and Freedoms
  37. JCA-NET(Japan)
  38. Jokkolabs Banjul
  39. MAUSAM Movement for Advancing Understanding of Sustainability And Mutuality
  40. Meedan
  41. Middle East Democracy Center
  42. New Hope for Poor
  43. Pangea.org
  44. People in Need
  45. Red Line for Gulf (RL4G)
  46. REDRESS
  47. Refugees Platform In Egypt
  48. Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
  49. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
  50. Sinai Foundation for Human Rights
  51. SMEX
  52. Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)
  53. The Climate Justice Coalition
  54. The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
  55. The Open Society Foundations (OSF)
  56. The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)
  57. War on Want
  58. World Movement for Democracy
  59. World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders