The Egyptian prisoner of conscience, Anas Beltagy, has been sentenced to nine years of arbitrary imprisonment, despite obtaining four acquittals and release orders many times.
Anas is the son and former parliamentarian, Mohamed Al-Beltagy, who is also detained in political cases.
He is the brother of Asmaa, who was killed by the army forces during the dispersal of Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in in 2013.
Anas spent most of the nine years in solitary confinement inside high-security prisons, amid inhumane conditions. He was subjected to torture, denied visits of his family and lawyer, and denied the opportunity to complete his university education.
Anas was arrested in his friend’s flat in Nasr City on December 13, 2013, after seeing his name, which indicates that he is the son of Mohamed Al-Beltagy, while he was 19 years old at the time.
He spent 9 years in detention, and the system involves him in new cases all the time, despite being in already prison.
Since his arrest, six cases were raised against Al-Beltagy by the Egyptian system, and the judiciary acquitted him in four cases. He was sentenced to one year in prison in a case he did not know anything about, and he was charged with the same charges of which he was acquitted in another two cases, simply to keep him in prison.
During his last court session, Anas Al-Beltagy told the judge that he feels his life is in danger, as he suffers from a deterioration in his physical and psychological health, as a result of the poor conditions of detention and unlimited solitary confinement, which exceeds the maximum legal period of pretrial detention.
Anas stressed that “the conditions of detention are very poor and violate the prison regulations, and that his detention itself is illegal, especially after exceeding the legal period of pretrial detention, in addition to the continuous renewal of his detention without any logical reason.”
Since General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi assumed power in the country; The Egyptian authorities have been launching arrest campaigns of dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists, in politically motivated arrests, and tens of thousands remain in detention until today.
