Egypt: activist Bahey Eldin Hassan sentenced to 15 years in absentia

Bahey Eldin Hassan during a round table discussion on the situation in Egypt, in Washington, in 2018. POMED / Wikimedia / CC

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The director of the Institute for Human Rights Studies in Cairo was sentenced in absentia on Tuesday, August 25, for "publishing false news, inciting violence and insulting justice".

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Exiled in France for six years, Bahey Eldin Hassan reacted by telephone to the verdict of the Egyptian justice. "  This judgment is not a surprise," he explains at the microphone of Murielle Paradon of RFI. Anyone who closely follows the way the justice system works in Egypt knows that how it works has become outrageous. I don't see myself as a victim because I am a human rights defender. My job is to defend the rights of others. There are tens of thousands of innocent Egyptians who are in prison for years, some have died.  "

It was the court in charge of terrorism cases that tried and convicted Bahey Eldin Hassan, one of the pioneers of human rights organizations in Egypt, said our correspondent in Cairo,  Alexandre Buccianti . It was under his leadership that the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights published Egypt's first comprehensive report on torture.

"  A moral cause  "

In 1993, Bahey Eldin Hassan founded the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. After the dismissal of ex-President Mubarak, Hassan refuses to join the very official National Council for Human Rights once under the Muslim Brotherhood and once again after the dismissal of President Mohamed Morsi.

A few weeks after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014, Bahey Eldin Hassan received death threats and left Egypt. Since his exile, he regularly denounces, via his Twitter account , human rights abuses in Egypt.

Will the activist continue to tweet and criticize the regime? “  Of course it's my job,” he says. In fact it is not really a job or a form of political opposition, it is more a moral cause to defend human rights.  "

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  • Egypt
  • Human rights

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