More than 100,000 people sign petition for Ramy Shaath’s freedom

Ramy Shaath has turned 50 inside an Egyptian prison, 719 days after he was first arrested from his home in Cairo.

Ramy is an Egyptian-Palestinian activist who founded Egypt’s branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and is the son of senior Palestinian Authority and Fatah official Nabil Shaath.

He is one of the most prominent figures of the January 2011 revolution which ousted long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

In April 2020 Ramy was added to a list of terror entities and individuals and his pre-trial detention has been renewed over 20 times since he was first detained.

Under Egyptian law detainees are only allowed to be kept on remand for two years, however, when they approach the end of this period, Egyptian authorities often bring new charges against them so they can be imprisoned for longer.

READ: Egypt executes 8 people

On5  July Ramy will have been inside for two years and if he remains in prison for longer than this, he is at risk of having new charges brought against him.

“The Egyptian authorities must hear our message and unconditionally release my husband, who has been wrongfully imprisoned for two years too long,” said his wife, Celine Lebrun-Shaath, who was deported back to France after her husband’s arrest.

“My husband’s freedom could be granted by the stroke of a pen. A human rights activist who should have never been detained in the first place; we ask only that the Egyptian judiciary observe its own laws in releasing him before July 5.”

This week, the Free Ramy Shaath campaign rallied to demand his freedom, and that of all political prisoners in Egypt.

On 23 June the campaign delivered petitions to Egyptian embassies in capitals across the world which reached 100,000 signatures.

Partners for the event include Amnesty USA, the Palestinian Youth Movement and Students for Justice in Palestine UMD.

In June more than 180 French MPs and city council members signed a letter calling for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to immediately release Shaath and expressed their concerns about his continuous detention and that of thousands of other prisoners of conscience.