Egypt’s highest appeals court has upheld a sentence of five years in prison and five years’ probation for Alaa Abd El-Fattah, one of the country’s most prominent pro-democracy activists. The ruling is final and cannot be appealed. El-Fattah has served three-and-a-half years of the sentence already, so he will spend the next year and a half in prison. The probation means he will have to spend up to 12 hours a day in a police station for another five years once he is released. El-Fattah was convicted of inciting a 2013 protest that broke a law barring public gatherings without government approval. He is also on trial in another case of insulting the judiciary, with a verdict scheduled in December. According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-backed government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has arrested or charged at least 60,000 people, forcibly disappeared hundreds for months at a time, handed down preliminary death sentences to hundreds more and sent more than 15,000 civilians to military courts.
Egyptian Court Upholds Harsh Sentence for Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah
HeadlineNov 09, 2017
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