The Egyptian activist Mohamed Adel has continued to be held in arbitrary detention for the sixth year on several charges, including spreading false news to harm national interests, a charge routinely directed by the Egyptian regime against political opponents.
Adel had served a 3-year prison sentence in a case known as Al Shura Council in addition to 3 years of police surveillance for 12 hours a day in the police station, of which he spent a year and a half before being re-arrested.
Adel faced similar charges in three other cases without being brought before court for nearly five years of pre-trial detention, during which he was subjected to difficult detention conditions.
On March 4, Adel was brought for the first time before court on charges of spreading false news and joining a terrorist group.
Adel has spent about a third of his life in arbitrary detention, security control, and freedom restriction.
He was arrested again on June 19, 2018, when he was in the police station to serve police supervision, but he was surprised that he was interrogated pending a new case.
Adel, born on August 8, 1988, is one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, who called for the general strike in Egypt in 2008, and served as the official spokesman for the movement during the late President Hosni Mubarak’s era.
Since the 2013 military coup, the Egyptian authorities have been waging an unprecedented crackdown on dissidents and critics, arresting thousands in politically motivated arrests, many of whom have been forcibly disappeared or held without trial for years on baseless terrorism-related charges, in very poor detention conditions.
