opponent Hisham Kassem sentenced to six months in prison as elections approach

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An Egyptian criminal court sentenced Hisham Kassem, leader of the liberal opposition, to six months in prison this Saturday, September 16. A sentence effectively preventing him from participating in the campaign for the presidential election scheduled for the spring. Already the day before, Ahmed al-Tantawi, who is the only candidate already in the campaign, revealed that his phone had been tapped since September 2021, after the Citizen Lab laboratory at the University of Toronto established the presence of software there. spy.

Hisham Kassem was sentenced to “ three months firm and 20,000 Egyptian pounds (around 600 euros) fine ” For ” defamation » towards a former minister and “ three months closed for contempt of agents » as part of the first case, reports on X (ex-Twitter) Gameela Ismaïl, one of the executives of the Free Movement, the opposition coalition led by Mr. Kassem. The sentencing appeal session has been set for October 7.

Immediate reactions from the opposition and human rights defenders

Placed in pre-trial detention on August 23 for refusing to pay the bail set by the prosecution, Kassem had been accused of insult on social networks by a former Minister of Labor, who himself had accused him of being at the foreign balance. As a reminder, Hisham Kassem co-founded the large independent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm in 2004 and openly opposed the power of President Abdel Fattah al Sissi.

Like several liberal figures, he denounced “ little credibility » presidential elections which must take place before March, recalls our correspondent in Cairo, Alexandre Buccianti. The date for presenting candidacies has not yet been set by the electoral commission, but posters supporting President Sissi have already started to be put up in the streets

The conviction provoked numerous protests on social networks from the liberal camp and human rights defenders. Starting with Amnesty International, which denounced a “ Egyptian authorities’ continuing campaign to silence peaceful critics and punish opponents “. Egypt is ranked 135th country out of 140 in the World Justice Project’s global rule of law rankings and has thousands of political prisoners.

Read alsoEgypt: families of dissidents increasingly attacked by the authorities

35 arrests in three weeks

Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, in power since he deposed Islamist Mohamed Morsi in 2013, intends to run in the upcoming presidential elections. Even if he hasn’t officially announced it yet. The regime launched a major “national dialogue”, supposed to give voice to an opposition that had been muzzled and reduced to nothing by arrests for a decade.

He also relaunched his presidential pardons committee. Several opposition figures have been released from prison in recent months. But, note the NGOs, if the presidential pardons committee released a thousand prisoners of conscience, “ three times more were arrested ” at the same time. For Gameela Ismaïl, “ Hicham Kassem had bothered the regime for a long time because he denounced in particular the role of the army in the economy » Egyptian, in free fall for months.

And it would not be the only one to disturb, since “at least 35 members of his campaign were arrested in less than three weeks in 13 different provinces,” the NGO Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) reported on Friday. Le Courant libre says it reserves the right to a “ escalation » and its executives raise the possibility of freezing their activities and boycotting the presidential election or the national dialogue.

(And with AFP)