Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered the release of political activist Ahmed Douma on Tuesday evening after setting bail at 100,000 Egyptian pounds in connection with a new case.
Human rights lawyer Khaled Ali, who attended the interrogation alongside Douma, said in a Facebook post that prosecutors accused him of “spreading false news, statements and rumors inside and outside the country.”
Mohamed Douma, the activist’s brother, told Al Manassa that lawyers informed the family that prosecutors questioned Ahmed Douma for more than 10 hours, focusing on his recent social media posts about the alleged assault of his imprisoned friend Mohamed Adel, the former spokesperson for the April 6 Youth Movement.
He added that the family is currently scrambling to secure the bail amount in order to complete Douma’s release procedures.
The decision comes a day after Egyptian security forces arrested Douma from his home in the Mokattam district shortly after midnight, according to his brother. Mohamed Douma said he had gone to Ahmed’s apartment following the arrest and found it emptied of his electronic equipment. “The mobile phones, the laptop and the camera were taken. They weren’t in the apartment,” he said.
He added that the arresting force also confiscated the hard drive containing the building’s surveillance camera footage, saying: “They took the cameras’ hard drive from the building where he lives.”
Last Wednesday, Rofaida Hamdy, Adel’s wife, called for an urgent medical examination of her husband to document what she described as “signs of beating on his foot and strangulation on his neck.”
“It is tragic that while the world is trying to focus on Palestinian prisoners in the jails of the enemy, our jailers here insist on proving they are a strong competitor — and may even surpass the enemy during genocide, boasting of Badr 3 and 10th of Ramadan 4, beating Mohamed Adel and threatening him,” Douma had written Friday on Facebook.
The following day, Egypt’s Interior Ministry denied that Adel had been assaulted inside 10th of Ramadan Prison 4, saying he had not been attacked by other inmates.
Last month, Cairo airport authorities barred Douma from traveling without providing any reason, with an officer at the passport department instructing him to refer to the public prosecutor.
On Aug. 19, 2023, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree pardoning a number of people serving final sentences, including Ahmed Douma, who had been sentenced in 2013 to 15 years in prison in the Cabinet clashes case.
Over the past year, the Supreme State Security Prosecution summoned Douma five times, most recently on Sept. 29, when he was accused of “spreading false news” in a Facebook post about the alleged physical assault of former supply minister Bassem Ouda inside Badr Prison by an officer from Egypt’s National Security Sector. He was released at the time on 50,000 Egyptian pounds bail.
In April, eight human rights organizations warned in a joint statement of what they described as a recurring pattern by the Supreme State Security Prosecution of re-targeting political opponents through repeated investigations or re-detention after their release.
