On 25 May 2016, Hany Mohamed Hassanin Sharaf, founder of the Civilized Alternative Party and former Egyptian Air Force pilot, was released from jail after spending more than six months in arbitrary detention. Prosecuted under trumped-up charges that were triggered by his political activism and in particular his work on the creation of a new opposition party, Hany was facing death penalty in case of a trial before a military court. Alkarama had solicited the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) in November 2015, to ask the Egyptian authorities to release him.
Hany had been abducted by Egypt's Homeland Security on 18 November 2015 as he made his way through Cairo International Airport to visit his daughter who studies medicine in Astrakhan, a city in southern European Russia.
Fearing that he could be tortured in detention in retaliation for his political affiliations, his family had contacted Alkarama which sent on 24 November 2015, a first urgent appeal to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to clarify his whereabouts.
A week later, Hany's family was informed that he was detained in a military facility and that he had been referred to the Military Court of Cairo under the suspicion that he had stolen and shared documents related to his former occupation as an Air-Force Pilot, accusations that were fully refuted by his family. Nonetheless, several military intelligence officers let themselves into Hany's house without any warrant in November and December 2015, confiscating all the documents that were related to his former work as pilot.
The military prosecution had then charged him with "stealing flight maps and routes of aircrafts" and "disclosing military information via satellite broadcasting outside of Egypt," on the sole basis of evidence provided by the military intelligence and without allowing Hany's lawyer to consult it. Hence, his case was referred to a military court, even though the accusations brought against him were related to a time where Hany was already a civilian and not an Air-Force pilot anymore, a former occupation that gave the authorities a pretext to prosecute him.
Under Egyptian military law, such accusations could have lead Hany to be sentenced to death by the Military Court of Cairo. Trials of civilians before military courts are considered as "in breach of the fundamental requirements of independence and impartiality and of guarantees for a fair trial" by the UN WGAD, which reiterated its position in its Opinion 35/2014 regarding the detention of Khaled Hamza and others following a trial before a military court. To avoid his possible sentencing by a military court, Alkarama had thus referred his case to the WGAD for action and learned that Hany had been released on 8 June without further charges.
"Hany's release is good news but he should not have been detained in the first place" declared Thomas-John Guinard, Alkarama's Legal Officer for the Nile region. "Alkarama remains concerned by the number of individuals who, like Hany, are being prosecuted before military courts only for exercising their political and civil rights."
Alkarama calls upon the authorities to immediately release all individuals who have been arrested for having exercised their political and civil rights and to grant them compensation for their time of arbitrary detention.
Alkarama also invites the authorities to urgently repeal the decree that extended the jurisdiction of military courts to try civilians and to amend the 2014 Egyptian Constitution accordingly to end this practice.
For more information or an interview, please contact media@alkarama.org (Tel: +41 22 734 1008)