An Egyptian military court on Sunday (January 15th) sentenced to life imprisonment Mohamed Ali, a famous businessman in exile, who had sparked protests against President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, state media report.

Mohamed Ali, a building contractor and actor, made himself known through videos that went viral on social networks, accusing the president and the military elite of corruption.

Filmed from his Spanish exile, it had resulted in September 2019 in rare demonstrations of hundreds of people in Cairo and several other cities.

After these rallies, 4,000 people were arrested, the worst wave of repression since the election of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in 2014, according to human rights NGOs.

>> To read - Mohamed Ali, the Egyptian entrepreneur who calls for the fall of President Sissi

No appeal possible for "terrorism" cases

Mohamed Ali, 48, was sentenced to life imprisonment with 37 co-defendants and several dozen others were sentenced to terms ranging from five to fifteen years in prison, the official press said.

The judgments of the special courts, generally in charge of "terrorism" cases, cannot be appealed.

In addition, the businessman has been placed, according to local media, on the blacklist of "terrorists" which means that he is banned from traveling and that his assets in Egypt are frozen.

However, he might not suffer from these decisions as he has been living near Barcelona for years.

This blacklisting is one of the regime's tactics to prevent opponents from leaving the country, human rights defenders regularly accuse.

Egypt is constantly singled out for its more than 65,000 political detainees, according to NGOs, its muzzling of the press and social networks and its relentless repression of all forms of opposition, from Islamists to liberals.

Demonstrating is thus almost impossible according to the law and parades are very rare in the country which will celebrate on January 25 the 12 years of the "revolution" which overthrew Hosni Mubarak in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Mohamed Ali had managed to mobilize after a first bitter devaluation in 2016. Today, taken by the throat by its creditors and hit hard by the war between Russia and Ukraine - its main suppliers of wheat -, Egypt is is sinking into its worst economic crisis and more and more residents are complaining about their living conditions.

With AFP

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