Free Hassan Mustafa & all detainees

Hassan Mustafa
A leading activist in Alexandria is currently detained with false charges & under threat of a 3-years prison sentence.

Hassan was arrested on 21^st of January as he was filing a complaint inside Mansheyya Courts Complex, at the prosecutor general’s office, against the random detention of protesters & children from a protest outside the same Court on the previous day. The protest was taking place during the trial of police officers accused of killing protesters in the 25 January Revolution.

Hassan was falsely accused of attacking a prosecutor. His detention order got renewed; he was beaten in detention after refusing solitary confinement, and currently faces the threat of 3-years imprison sentence.

This is not the first time Hassan gets detained. On 6 April 2010 he was also beaten up & detained while participating in a protest demanding an end to “emergency laws”.

Hassan is not alone; he has the support of lawyers from the “Front to Defend Egypt Protesters”, as do more than 500 detainees who got randomly arrested from all over Egypt in the past 3 weeks. Notably, not all were protesters; some were just passers-by, often on their way home. One third of all detainees are children, and all have faced illegal detention in Central Security camps, beatings and torture.

The following is an open letter that Hassan addresses to Morsi from his prison cell *

Mr. President, I will speak truth to your power. We have suffered before and during your reign. You are no Moses, but another Pharaoh, wanting nothing but the advancement of yourself and your brotherhood.

Justice can't find its way to your rule, truth has no place under your government, the oppressed find no justice in your judiciary, for your state is a state of oppression and tyranny, following in the steps of those who came before you. You bedamn land and offspring, spread poverty and hunger, wherever you walk. You have built an entourage of those who serve injustice and thrive on oppression, as if there was no lesson to be learned from what happened to your predecessor.

May God bestow change on us and bless us with the power to show you, your brotherhood and your entourage that what you have feared.

"Pharaoh exalted himself on earth, and divided the people into factions. He persecuted a group of them, slaughtering their sons and sparing their daughters. He was verily a corrupter. And we wished to bestow grace on those who were oppressed, to make them leaders and make them inherit the earth, and to grant them power and, at their hands, show Pharaoh and Haman and their soldiers what they had feared." (Quran 28:4-6)

From a speaker of truth against your injustice and a prisoner in your state of oppression and tyranny.

Hassan Mustafa

Cell 14, High-security ward 23, Section 5, Burj Al-Arab Remand Prison

Written on Friday 8 February, 2013

The brutality of the police is still the same.** Activists continue to be targeted, just as they were during Mubarak’s era, but now with the blessings of Morsi & the MB.

FREE Hassan & all detainees.

* Translated by Nariman Youssef, original Arabic letter can be found here

** For more about state crimes and recent torture cases by police, please read EIPR’s report “State crimes remained unpunished: the Interior Ministry is above the law and the Public Prosecution is missing in action”