Press Release
The family of British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, currently detained in Egypt, has accused the Egyptian authorities of refusing to release him despite the completion of his full sentence.
Abdel Fattah, 42, was arrested on September 29, 2019, and sentenced to five years in prison for spreading “false information” after reposting a Facebook post accusing a police officer of torture.
Abdel Fattah is considered a key figure in Egypt’s 2011 January 25 Revolution, which ousted President Hosni Mubarak. He is also one of the most vocal critics of the current regime under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and has been imprisoned multiple times since 2006.
Authorities refuse to release Abdel Fattah despite sentence completion:
In a video posted on social media, his sister Mona Seif stated that authorities rejected a request to count the two years Abdel Fattah spent in pre-trial detention as part of his sentence. He was supposed to be released on September 29, 2024, but authorities calculated his sentence starting from the date of the final ruling in January 2022, meaning his release will be delayed until January 2027.
In this context, human rights lawyer and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali confirmed that Abdel Fattah was expected to be released after serving five years in prison, but the public prosecutor refused to include his pre-trial detention from 2019 to 2022 in the sentence calculation.
Calls for legal compliance and his release:
The Committee for Justice (CFJ) condemned what it described as arbitrary measures against Abdel Fattah and called on the Egyptian authorities to adhere to the law, particularly Article 482 of the Egyptian Criminal Procedure Code. This article states that the prison term should begin on the day of the detainee’s arrest based on the enforceable ruling, with pre-trial detention being deducted from the overall sentence. CFJ urged the immediate release of Alaa Abdel Fattah.
