Amnesty International: Responding to the news that Egyptian activist and writer Ahmed Douma has been convicted and sentenced to one year in prison following an unfair trial, Amnesty International’s Regional Researcher, Mahmoud Shalaby said:  

“The renewed unjust imprisonment after an unfair trial of Ahmed Douma is a devastating assault on the right to freedom of expression.  The weaponization of the criminal justice system against Ahmed Douma and other activists lays bare president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government’s relentless campaign to crush peaceful dissent and restrict civic space.  

“Having already spent a decade in arbitrary detention under cruel and inhuman conditions, Ahmed Douma is being penalized yet again under the guise of bogus ‘false news’ charges, solely for publishing an article and a social media post criticizing detention conditions. His renewed detention is emblematic of the Egyptian authorities’ ongoing misuse of the criminal justice system to punish and deter peaceful dissent, destroying the lives of thousands of people and their families.  

“Ahmed Douma has been targeted solely for peacefully exercising his human rights. Egyptian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release him, quash this politically motivated sentence, and end their persistent misuse of the criminal judicial system against him. 

“Ahmed Douma’s trial was marred by gross fair trial violations. The court rejected defence requests for the court to examine the prison conditions that he had written about and to hear testimony from defence witnesses and experts. The trial was held behind closed doors and was inaccessible to the public. 

“This sentence exposes the hollow reality of the presidential pardons Ahmed Douma and others received in 2023 and signals that activists released from prolonged unjust detention are not safe from re-arrest.”   

Read the full article on Unjust one-year prison sentence for activist Ahmed Douma emblematic of Egypt’s ongoing arbitrary detention crisis