Egypt: Three human rights activists released from prison
By Jacob Coffelt
According to the Egyptian initiative for personal rights (EIPR), Gasser Abdel-Razek, Karim Ennarah and Mohamed Basheer were arrested on November 3rd for “spreading false news” as well as for “joining a terror group”.
The three human rights activists were working for the EIPR when they were arrested after performing a public interview about human rights in Egypt with foreign diplomats. Something which is not explicitly outlined as an illegal activity in Egypt, hence the unrelated charges.
The EIPR released this statement on Thursday regarding the release of their staff:
“Gasser, Karim and Basheer were let go directly from Tora prison. Unusual. They are now either home or on the way home.”
While their release is surely a welcomed site, this incident is not isolated and will likely continue to happen so long as minimal pressure is applied by the international community.
Even when Italian student Giulio Regeni was brutally tortured and murdered by the Egyptian security services, the public outcry was short lived and ended with Italy now being one of the biggest developers of Egypt's energy resources. Italian energy group Eni being the one who discovered Egypt's largest natural gas field in 2015.
So it seems that despite verbal warnings from the EU (namely the EU parliament resolution of March 10th, 2016) calumniating in an arms embargo. Which considering the fact that as of 2020, Italy is still exporting hundreds of millions of euro’s worth of military equipment to Egypt despite any real answers to the murder of Giulio Regeni, probably wasn’t all that effective.
Despite Egypt constantly being in the spotlight for human rights violations such as the arrest of these activists, they still manage to maintain a positive enough public appearance to prevent any real pressure from the international community to reform. In other words, Egypt will continue to carry out these basic violations of human rights so long as President al-Sisi is in power and he can get away with it.
