Egypt charges ex-political prisoner with spreading fake news

L'Orient-Le Jour

3 days ago

Egyptian poet and former political prisoner Ahmed Douma was charged with spreading fake news on Tuesday, his lawyer told AFP, two years after he received a presidential pardon.
Douma was summoned to the offices of state security prosecutors, where he was questioned for seven hours before being charged with "broadcasting false news within and outside the country," in reference to "four posts on X," his lawyer Nabeh Elgenadi told AFP.
He was released on bail set at 50,000 Egyptian pounds or around $1,000.
Elgenadi said the posts referred to included one in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and another criticising the sale of state assets.
Fake news charges are frequently levelled against opposition figures.
The poet had on Monday said in a post on X that this would be the fourth case brought against him in recent months, in addition to "dozens of complaints, smear campaigns (...) and threats to my fundamental rights since I was released from detention".
After a decade behind bars, Douma was released in August 2023, part of a wave of high-profile pardons issued by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The poet, a prominent figure in Egypt's 2011 uprising, was arrested in the sweeping crackdown that followed the army's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi two years later.
In 2022, Sisi reactivated a presidential pardoning committee, freeing hundreds of political prisoners in what was billed as a new start for Egypt's much-criticised human rights record.
But rights groups say a widening crackdown since then has detained more people than those released and further curtailed the space for dissent.
In April, when Douma was last summoned for questioning, Egyptian rights groups condemned what they said was a practice of summoning pardoned dissidents "with the aim of intimidating them and restricting their freedom of expression," according to a statement from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
According to Elgenadi, all of the cases against Douma "remain under investigation" with state security, which "has the right to close the cases, refer them to court or continue investigating".
"It's impossible for anyone to be certain what will happen next," he continued.
Rights groups say Egypt holds tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of them in brutal conditions.