5 Years for a Retweet: Egyptian Rights Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah Sentenced by Emergency Court

An emergency court in Egypt has sentenced leading human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to an additional five years in prison on the charge of spreading false news undermining national security" for sharing a post on Twitter. El-Fattah has been imprisoned since his arrest in September 2019, just six months after he was released following a five-year prison term for his role in the peaceful demonstrations of 2011 that led to the fall of Egypt's longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. Alaa wasn't even in the courtroom," says El-Fattah's aunt, the acclaimed Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who was in the courtroom at the time of his sentencing. What Alaa did was he had one retweet, and they are punishing him for that with a five-year prison sentence."