The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) demands the immediate release of Hisham Mamdouh Ali (35 years old), who has been detained for over 11 years after being "recycled" (rotated) in multiple cases, and Ahmed Sabry Nassef (26 years old), who has been detained for nearly 9 years, having also been recycled multiple times in multiple investigations.

On December 10, the South Cairo Criminal Court in the Fifth Settlement postponed the session scheduled to review the renewal of detention orders for all defendants presented before it. This postponement was due to a complete internet outage, which prevented the court panel from connecting with the defendants' detention facilities to hold the session via video conference. The Court ordered the session to be postponed until the following Monday, December 16, assuming the internet would be working normally by then.

The Court was supposed to review the case of two of EIPR's clients yesterday, who have been caught up in a complex legal web for many years with no serious justification, as their pre-trial detention continues without legal basis. The first detainee, Hisham Mamdouh Ali, has been held in pre-trial detention for approximately one year in connection with Case No. 238/2025, Al-Khalifa Misdemeanours, at the "Correction and Rehabilitation Center," known as Badr 1 Prison. The second detainee, Ahmed Sabry Nassef, is held in pre-trial detention at 10th of Ramadan Prison 5 in connection with Case No. 15986ظ2024, Nasr City Misdemeanors.

This is not the first time Hisham Mamdouh's detention renewal hearing has been postponed. He did not appear on screen during the video conference session held on December 2, when prison guards informed the judge that he was very ill and had been transferred to the hospital. Meanwhile, his family confirmed to EIPR that he suffers from epilepsy, and the medication provided by the family at their own expense reaches Hisham through the prison pharmacy, but he is only able to obtain it with extreme difficulty. He informed his family that he was forced to wait for a full five hours while handcuffed behind his back to receive his medicine.

Hisham Mamdouh was arrested on April 1, 2014, and was initially held in pre-trial detention in connection with the case commonly known as the "murder of journalist Mayada Ashraf case." He was sentenced to life imprisonment, which the Court of Cassation later reduced the sentence to seven years. After completing his full sentence in 2021 and during the procedures for his release, the Ministry of Interior refused to finally release him and handed him over to the prosecution, accusing him in a different case in connection with possessing leaflets. Despite the implausibility of accusing a detainee who spent the last seven years of his life in custody of possessing leaflets, the prosecution remanded him in pre-trial detention. This same situation was repeated with him in two subsequent cases, bringing the total number of cases he has been charged in to four cases over 11 years of detention.

Ahmed Sabry Nassef has suffered from arbitrary detention that has lasted for nearly nine years without him being convicted of a single crime. Despite the courts acquitting him more than once, along with several decisions for his release from detention, the Ministry of Interior continued to ignore said judicial rulings and decisions that vindicated him and repeatedly sent him to the prosecution for new investigations in connection with nine separate cases over the past years.

EIPR stresses that Hisham Mamdouh Ali and Ahmed Sabry Nassef must be immediately released, and appeals to the Public Prosecutor to close all open cases against them. EIPR hopes that the internet will work normally during the next session, or that the court panel will decide to return to the normal practice of holding sessions with the personal presence of the defendants, to enable them of comprehensively examine their situation over the past years of continued detention, and to look into the unjustified and arbitrary persecution they have faced. EIPR further hopes the Court will decide to drop the charges they face and order their release, especially since neither of them was ever arrested in flagrante delicto, nor have they ever been confronted with any meaningful evidence or credible witness testimony that supports their continued prosecution.