The Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience said at a public meeting on Wednesday night in Cairo it will step up popular and legal pressure to secure the release of detainees it calls “prisoners of conscience.”
The announcement followed the committee’s submission earlier on Wednesday of a memo to Egypt’s public prosecutor seeking the immediate release of detainees whose pretrial detention has exceeded the legal maximum.
“We went to the public prosecutor to present a grievance about the injustice inflicted on tens of thousands of the best young people in our country,” Abdel Galil Mostafa, founder of the National Association for Change, said during the meeting. Imprisonment had become punishment for exercising the right to express opinions, as guaranteed by the constitution, he added.
The group met the assistant public prosecutor, who listened to their demands and discussed the matter “logically,” Mostafa said.
He explained that the official asked how many detainees had exceeded the maximum period of pretrial detention, promised to verify the figures, and resolve any injustices.
The committee said it is waiting for a response to its memo, but what it described as a national duty requires continuing peaceful and legal struggle to correct the injustice to those wronged.
Access to the prosecutor, and next steps
Lawyer Bilal Habib, one of the memo’s signatories, told Al Manassa earlier that security staff at the public prosecutor’s office did not respond for more than two and a half hours to requests to enter and meet the public prosecutor in person. After pressure, he said, authorities allowed only three of the 17 signatories to enter, meet the assistant public prosecutor, and submit the memo.
Habib said those three were rights activist Magda Radwan, rights lawyer Ahmed Qenawy, and Mostafa.
Qenawy announced a series of upcoming events organized by the committee to pursue its primary objective. He emphasized that the initiative is built around a single, "legitimate" demand: the immediate release of individuals held in pretrial detention for over two years.
He added that the committee is preparing another memo with the same demands to submit to the president “at the earliest opportunity.”
“What we are doing today is protecting the system from itself, because the current situation puts the country at risk,” Qenawy said. Warning that anger and poverty have reached an unbearable limit, he stated the committee will sustain pressure and evolve its protest methods through a series of escalating steps.
Sayed El-Toukhy, head of the Karama Party, said detainees will not be released without practical steps and sustained insistence, adding that the committee’s moves will be part of broader action, including organizing static protests in front of the High Court to pressure authorities to change their stance on issues that concern public opinion.
Families describe fear, and the cost of prolonged detention
Nada Mougheeth, wife of detained Al Manassa cartoonist Ashraf Omar, said the current situation leaves prisoners’ families unable to believe that the law will be applied as it should.
“Ordinary people have become more afraid of the future, because we do not know what might happen tomorrow,” Mougheeth said.
She asked, “What can we do in this unknown future?” and said that “silence or surrender is no longer an option, because we do not have the luxury of surrender.”
Mougheeth said detainees face what she described as another punishment, repeated renewals for those referred to felony courts. She said the practice reflects intransigence in the application of justice.
Ashraf Omar was arrested on July 22, 2024, after a security force in civilian clothing raided his home and took him away handcuffed and blindfolded to an unknown location, Mougheeth said. He appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution two days later, on July 24.
Rights lawyer Magda Radwan said social movements are what move systems and influence political decisions. “Our goal is not to change the system, but to reform it,” she said.
“We do not want a social explosion,” Radwan said. “All we want is to improve the situation of families who are suffering from poverty, and cannot even visit their loved ones in prison.”
Radwan said she told the assistant public prosecutor that families have become “time bombs,” and that they could “explode suddenly.”
Legal limits, and allegations of “recycling” cases
The Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience describes itself as an initiative launched in November under the slogan “Egypt without prisoners of conscience.” It said it brings together political parties and movements, more than 50 public figures, and families of detainees, with the aim of coordinating civil and legal efforts to secure releases in cases tied to freedom of expression and public engagement, and to demand detention conditions that comply with the law.
The memo presented to the Prosecutor General was signed by politicians and public figures, including Ahmed Baha Shaaban, head of the board of trustees of the Civil Democratic Movement, opposition politician Ahmed Tantawy, activist Ahmed Douma, as well as lawyers, and families of those held in pretrial detention.
The memo said Egypt’s Criminal Procedure Code sets a two-year limit for pretrial detention in cases punishable by death or life imprisonment. It said pretrial detention may not exceed 18 months in felony cases and six months in misdemeanor cases, adding that exceeding those limits triggers an automatic lapse of the detention order, making continued detention unlawful and void.
The memo also criticized what it described as the continued detention of some detainees through “recycling,” a term used to describe re-arresting, or re-charging, defendants in similar cases. It said the law prohibits detaining a defendant again for the same alleged acts by reclassifying them under new charges, adding that a defendant may not be tried twice for the same acts.
Reiterating a point defense teams have repeatedly raised, the memo said that pretrial detention is an exceptional measure, not a punishment. The signatories urged authorities to prioritize noncustodial measures when investigations do not require detention in custody.
The signatories appealed to the public prosecutor to prioritize social stability and what they called the spirit of justice, saying they were pursuing “a right we believe in and justice” in a country where, they said, the suffering has fallen on “its best young people, thinkers, and people of conscience.”
The memo said the public prosecution’s real duty to society is to protect family cohesion and relieve the hardship borne by wives and mothers. It warned that the ongoing climate of “tense anticipation and fearful vigilance” fuels “humiliation and destruction, not repair and construction.”
Separately, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in October called for a comprehensive review of pretrial detention, and for renewal hearings to become a real mechanism of judicial oversight rather than routine extensions. It also stressed that the public prosecution must respect its role as an investigative authority.
