Egyptian political activist Mohamed Adel, a co-founder of the 6 April Youth Movement, has entered an open-ended hunger strike as of 1 May in protest against what he describes as arbitrary deprivation of his right to continue his education during his ongoing pre-trial detention, which has lasted since 2018.
His wife, Rofeida Hamdy, announced that Mohamed began his hunger strike after being prevented from sitting the second semester exams for his postgraduate diploma in Public Law at the Faculty of Law, Mansoura University, despite having completed all the official procedures.
She noted that this is not the first time he has faced such obstruction. He was also denied the opportunity to take his exams in December last year while detained in Gamasa Prison, where he encountered deliberate administrative barriers. However, she clarified that the administration of Al-Sharqiya’s 10th of Ramadan Prison, where he is currently held, has responded differently and expressed willingness to facilitate the necessary steps.
Mohamed Adel has been held in pre-trial detention since 18 June 2018, when he was arrested immediately upon leaving the Aga Police Station in Dakahlia Governorate, where he had been under police surveillance following the completion of a previous prison sentence.
Despite nearly six years having passed, he remains in custody pending two separate cases, in addition to a final sentence of four years’ imprisonment handed down in a third case.
The charges brought against him are the typical accusations frequently used against activists, including “joining a terrorist organisation, financing it, and supplying it with information from inside prison” — allegations often relied upon to justify the repeated renewal of pre-trial detention without proceeding to a final trial.
Mohamed Adel’s hunger strike reflects a recurring pattern of individual protest within Egyptian prisons, in the absence of effective mechanisms to guarantee detainees’ basic rights, including the right to education.
This form of protest, also adopted by fellow activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah since March and still ongoing, underscores the failure of legal remedies available to prisoners and forces them to use their bodies as tools of pressure and symbolic resistance.
Although Egyptian law upholds the right of prisoners to education and obliges correctional institutions to facilitate this, the reality on the ground reveals systematic administrative arbitrariness, used as an additional tool of punishment beyond the scope of court rulings.
Beyond the details of this individual case, Mohamed Adel’s hunger strike brings renewed attention to the issue of prolonged pre-trial detention, which in recent years has become a repressive instrument used to keep political activists behind bars without final judicial convictions.
This case also highlights the absence of genuine judicial oversight over prisons, the erosion of fair trial standards, and the broader collapse of independence and transparency in the justice system.
In this context, the continuation of detention without a clear legal horizon, coupled with the denial of education and increasing restrictions on fundamental rights, stands as a stark reflection of the human rights crisis Egypt faces today, amid ongoing international silence.
