On 26 June Egypt’s Emergency State Security Criminal Court (ESSC) sentenced protester Mahmoud Hussein to three years in prison for wearing an anti-torture T-Shirt. He was arrested following the court session and taken into custody to serve the remainder of his sentence after he had already spent two years and 10 months in pretrial detention. Responding to the news, Sara Hashash, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:
“Mahmoud Hussein’s conviction is a travesty of justice that illustrates how Egypt’s criminal justice system is being used as a tool to punish dissent and intimidate peaceful activists into silence.
“It is ludicrous that he has been given a three-year prison term simply for exercising his right to freedom of expression by wearing an anti-torture T-shirt. In a grim irony the sentence was handed down on 26 June, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
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