Egypt hands down prison sentences to three activists in 2011 uprising

Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Three activists at the center of Egypt's 2011 uprising were sentenced to prison on Monday in a Cairo court.

The emergency court sentenced Alaa Abd El-Fattah to five years in prison on charges of "spreading false news." Additionally, human rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer, who worked as Abd El-Fattah's counsel and blogger Mohamed "Oxygen" Ibrahim were both sentenced to four years on the same charges.

The sentences must be ratified by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi but they are not able to be appealed.

Abd El-Fattah has been detained multiple times since 2013 for violating a law banning street protests. He was released in 2019 under the condition that he spend at least 12 hours every day sleeping inside his local police station.

His mother, Laila Soueif, wrote in an essay in The New York Times that most of his prison time has seen him "held without charge, in pretrial detention."

"Alaa is on trial for retweeting a tweet about a prisoner who died after being tortured, in the same prison where Alaa is now held," she wrote.

"His crime is that, like millions of young people in Egypt and far beyond, he believed another world was possible," she added. "And he dared to try to make it happen."

Human rights groups have criticized the three mens' imprisonment and the fact that their trial was launched just before Egypt announced the end of its state of emergency.

"The egregious miscarriage of justice handed down by this exceptional court to punish peaceful expression reveals how Egypt's justice system has itself become a tool of repression," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "The court should overturn the verdict and release Abdel Fattah, al-Baqer, and Ibrahim immediately."

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the United States was "disappointed by the verdicts" issued by the court.

"Journalists, human rights defenders, and others seeking to peacefully exercise their freedom of expression should be able to do so without facing criminal penalties, intimidation, harassment, or any other form of reprisal," said Price.