CAIRO -

After the expiration of his 5-year prison sentence, the Egyptian authorities released student activist Gamal Abdel Hakim yesterday, Sunday, who was accused of promoting the ideas of a terrorist group against the background of his participation in demonstrations condemning his country's signing of the agreement to redraw the maritime borders with Saudi Arabia, according to which Cairo waived The islands of Tiran and Sanafir in favor of Riyadh.

Abdel Hakim is the last prisoner of the "Tiran and Sanafir" case, according to what was announced by the Bread and Freedom Party (under establishment), to which the student activist belongs. The Egyptian security carried out a campaign of arrests targeting hundreds of opponents of the agreement between 2016 and 2017.

Police forces arrested Abdel Hakim from his home in Sharkia Governorate (northeast of Cairo) in May 2017, on the pretext that he joined provocative elements who incited against the regime and called on citizens to demonstrate and carry out riots and violence. He was convicted by the Criminal Court and sentenced to 5 years in prison. .

In a report entitled "A Prisoner Without a Crime", the Association for Freedom of Opinion and Expression described the student Gamal Abdel Hakim as one of the peaceful opposition activists whom the authorities accused of terrorism as punishment for his student activism and political work.

Abdel Hakim - before his imprisonment - was a student at Zagazig University, and he participated with colleagues in student unions and democratic youth groups to draft a proposed student regulation "Our University Regulation", which was submitted to the Office of the Minister of Higher Education with the aim of liberating student activity from the administrative restrictions imposed on him.

The news of the release of the last prisoners in the Tiran and Sanafir case renewed the conversation - via social media platforms - about the Egyptianness of the two islands, and the extent of the mistake made by the current regime for ceding Egyptian land to another country without presenting convincing arguments to public opinion.

His accusation was that he said Egyptian tiran and sanafir 😑 https://t.co/NORSKcuJhM

- Citizen Janab 😑 (@Eslamabdelwaha) May 16, 2022

Great joy # Jamal_Abdul-Hakim on the asphalt, after completing five years, he was sentenced in the events of #Tiran_Sanafir, wishing


all the oppressed #Freedom_for_Jadaan pic.twitter.com/AfiPMnqW9J

— Waeltawfik (@waeltaweek) May 15, 2022

power passed

In June 2017, the Egyptian House of Representatives approved the agreement to reset the maritime borders between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which recognized Riyadh’s sovereignty over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, located at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, more than a year after the signing of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the King of Saudi Arabia. Salman bin Abdulaziz has 24 agreements in the economic and investment fields, which were said at the time to be worth $25 billion. Simultaneously, Sisi signed an agreement to redraw the borders that transferred the two islands to Saudi ownership.

Tiran and Sanafir control the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, and then the ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel.

The closure of the Gulf of Aqaba on the orders of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser was the direct cause of the outbreak of the June 1967 war.

The agreement met with objections from many Egyptian political forces on the grounds that the demarcation of the borders will change the political and legal status of the Gulf of Aqaba, as it becomes an international shipping lane after Cairo had the right of absolute sovereignty in it.

Meanwhile, the "Support Egypt" coalition, which holds the majority in the Egyptian parliament, affirmed that the Strait of Tiran is an international shipping lane under the provisions of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

He added - in a statement - that freedom of navigation in the strait is guaranteed to any country, as well as the right of land passage, describing what was circulated about the risks of the agreement on Egyptian national security with false information aimed at misleading public opinion.

In April 2016, under the slogan "Friday of the Land", protests erupted following Egypt's abandonment of part of its lands, and security carried out a massive campaign of arrests targeting hundreds of young people.

According to what was published by Al-Mal website, the "Freedom for Al-Jadaan" campaign estimated the number of detainees in just a month and a half, after Sisi signed the agreement, at 1,200 detainees.