Egyptian prosecution frees five in Shiite sweep and eight Al Ahly fans
Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered the release of 13 pretrial detainees held across two separate cases on Sunday, including five men held in a sectarian sweep known as the “Shiite case” and eight supporters of Al Ahly SC, the Justice Support Foundation announced.
In Case No. 5635 of 2026 (Supreme State Security), widely referred to by local media as the “Shiite case,” the prosecution ordered the release of Ahmed Zakaria Hassan, Gamal Abdel Moneim Mohamed, Mohamed Sayed Ahmed, Mahmoud Ahmed Amer, and Ahmed Mohamed Zaki. The release order excluded journalist Haidar Kandil, who remains in detention under the same case.
Security forces arrested more than 36 individuals in Case 5635 as part of what rights advocates described as a targeted campaign against Shiite Muslims ahead of the religious commemoration of Ashura. The sweep began on June 22 when authorities detained journalist Haidar Kandil, according to an earlier statement from the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR).
The EFHR noted that interrogators questioned detainees about their conversion to the Shiite doctrine, how long they had adhered to it, their meeting locations, and the nature of their religious rites.
Lawyers from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) similarly documented during interrogations an official focus on the detainees’ beliefs, convictions, religious practices, and their views on the Prophet’s Companions and the Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet’s family). The EIPR characterized this line of questioning as a direct violation of constitutional guarantees protecting freedom of belief.
The release of the five Egyptian detainees follows roughly five months of pretrial detention and comes just before the case transferred to the consultation chamber: the judicial stage where judges review case files to either renew detentions or grant release, human rights lawyer Hoda Abdel Wahab told Al Manassa.
Abdel Wahab anticipated that prosecutors would order the release of the remaining detainees during the next hearing, describing Sunday’s development as “a very positive indicator.”
Sunday’s decision follows earlier rights appeals. On Oct. 5, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) demanded the release of all individuals detained in the case after the prosecution renewed their detention for 15 days pending investigation, pointing out that authorities had already freed 10 foreign nationals implicated in the exact same proceedings.
According to the ECRF, the prosecution had ordered on Sept. 24 the release of those 10 foreign defendants across five nationalities—four Yemenis, a Saudi, a New Zealander, a Libyan, and a Syrian—while extending the detention of 19 other defendants, mostly elderly, for 15 days.
The commission reported that the defendants “appeared severely exhausted during the hearing.” The Egyptian detainees complained of an inability to endure the hardships of detention, insisted they held no ties to any outlawed groups or organizations, and denied the allegations compiled in National Security Agency investigative reports.
At the time, the EIPR labeled the release of the 10 foreign defendants “a delayed step toward closing this case,” urging authorities to follow through by immediately and unconditionally releasing all detainees and dropping all charges against them.
Al Ahly fans released
In January, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) urged the public prosecutor to intervene urgently and exercise statutory powers to release Al Ahly fans held in pretrial detention over fandom-related cases, including the men named in this case.
The ENHR condemned the absence of tangible progress despite repeated pledges by club management and prominent business figures to intervene and resolve the file.
The rights group stressed that the prolonged detention of these young men across disparate cases without having committed acts of violence violates the constitutional principle of equality and equal treatment, particularly in light of concurrent release orders granted to detainees in comparable cases.
The eight detained football supporters in Case No. 3099 of 2025 are Khaled Mohamed Abdel Badi, Hamdi Emad Hamdi Arafa, Tarek Adel Abdel Fattah Salama, Hossam Hassan Ahmed, Amr Khaled Atef Abu Suleiman, Mohamed Zeinhom Abdel Rahman, Youssef Mohamed Abu El-Nour, and Mohamed Fouad Abdel Qader.