Egyptian authorities have refused to launch dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah regardless of serving out his five-year sentence, his sister mentioned Sunday.
Abdel Fattah, 42, was arrested on September 29, 2019. Simply over two years later, he was handed a five-year sentence for “spreading false information” by sharing a Fb publish about police brutality.
His household on Thursday urged the federal government of Britain, the place Abdel Fattah holds citizenship, to make sure his launch this weekend.
However on Sunday his sister Mona Seif mentioned in a video posted to social media that the authorities “refused a request” to contemplate the 2 years of pre-trial detention as time served in direction of his sentence.
She mentioned the authorities are as a substitute counting his sentence as having began from the date that it was ratified, and has thereby set the date of his launch for January 2027.
Seif had advised reporters in London on Thursday that “if he’s not out by September 29, it’s an open-ended sentence”.
A author and laptop programmer, Abdel Fattah has spent the higher a part of greater than a decade behind bars, having been jailed repeatedly below successive presidents since Egypt’s 2011 rebellion.
He was granted UK citizenship by way of his British-born mom in 2022 whereas he was in jail.
Rights teams say there are tens of hundreds of political prisoners in Egypt, held below poor situations and topic to unwell therapy and abuses by the authorities.