Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said during a visit to France on Tuesday that there are no political prisoners in Egypt. “We have no political prisoners,” the president told France24 in a televised interview, stressing that “everything has been done according to the law within its jurisdiction”. “A person placed under arrest is one who has been arrested on certain charges that will see them put on trial,” the president said, adding “either he is acquitted or convicted.” Egypt has been accused by local and international rights group for carrying out sweeping rights violations, including the imprisonment of up to 60.000 citizens on political grounds. The country’s National Security authorities are not only imprisoning people on unprecedented levels, but are also carrying out systematic torture of political prisoners, deemed by Human Rights Watch as “probably amounting to a crime against humanity”. According to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Egyptian authorities under president Sisi have taken a series of legal and security measures “to eliminate opposition voices, stifle freedom of expression, harass journalists, and crush independent worker’s movements.” Fair and free judicial trials, the right to life and freedoms…
‘No Political Prisoners in Egypt,’ Sisi Says During France Visit
October 24, 2017
