( Photo by Nasser El-Azzazy)
By: Nasser El-Azzazy
For the third consecutive day, families of prisoners in Sinai blocked off the Al-Arish central Sinai road in southern al-Arish, preventing night shift workers from arriving at cement factories in the centre of the peninsula. Individuals and privately owned vehicles were allowed to pass through.
Protesters stated that their relatives are “prisoners who have been languishing in Mubarak’s prisons since 2004, and even though he himself is gone, his policies persist under different leadership”.
“We hoped to receive justice after the 25 January revolution,” they said. “However, all promises made to us have been broken.”
They added that they are “fed up and refuse to stand idly by in the face of injustice, as we reject the findings of Egypt’s circus courts which have made rulings based off emergency law, something that was supposed to have been dissolved with the onset of the revolution. The African Court on Human and People’s Rights has ruled that our relatives should be compensated and released, however nearly a year has passed since then and we still have not seen any results. We warn the current regime that going down this path will create a powder kettle that is bound to explode”.
The families concluded that they will not “stand idly by, but rather organise peaceful protests that the regime will not be able to quell except by addressing our demands. These include releasing our relatives, allowing them a re-trial before a civil court, and compensating them for their years spent living behind bars”.
