The Banha Child Court sentenced Sunday a 14-year-old minor, Abdallah Amer, to seven years in prison on charges of protesting and possessing t-shirts with revolutionary slogans on them, according to his lawyer Raouf Issa.
Issa said the court acquitted a number of defendants accused of drug possession, theft and bribery, whereas “it found Amer a risk to society and imprisoned him”. He added that the case included another defendant who received three years in prison, but was later acquitted after paying a fine.
Amer was arrested in Toukh in Mansoura last September in a protest. He is to remain in prison.
His family said their relative has been detained for 10 months in Banha’s security forces camp, adding that his “crime was only walking in the streets with a shirt”. They added that his father had been frequently arrested under former president Hosni Mubarak, until he died due to lack of medical care.
On Sunday, the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms reported that three students in Mansoura were referred to military court. One of the students is Mazen Hamza, who is, according to his family, suffering from a severe salivary gland infection. He is charged with rioting and belonging to an illegal group.
Hamza was detained four months ago, and his detention has been renewed ever since. He is the son of well-known Muslim Brotherhood leader Khaled Hamza, a legal activist and former editor-in-chief of Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website.
According to local rights group, there are 170 students on trial in military tribunals.
In a related development, another minor in Aswan named Ahmed Nour Al-Din is being prosecuted in a Criminal Court, on charges of belonging to an illegal group.
The Prosecution’s branch in Alexandria renewed the detention of a 14-year-old minor called Abdel Rahman Moustafa for 45 more days, after being charged with thuggery and protesting. Moustafa’s family said he is suffering third degree burns on his leg, and is banned from having medicine or medical care.
Since the 25 January Revolution, the numbers of arrested minors has spiked dramatically.
Last April, the Abbaseya Court handed three-year and 15-year prison sentences to two minors accused of protesting without a permit, setting fire to a police officer’s car, and possessing explosives in their homes without a permit.
The Court sentenced the 15-year-old Nour Zyad to 15 years in prison, and 13-year-old Ossama Reda to three years.
Last November, an Alexandria misdemeanour court sentenced 78 minors to 13 and 17 years of jail time for allegedly belonging to the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Human Rights Watch released a statement last March identifying “serious violations by authorities” against minors in Egypt.
According to human rights group ‘Free the Children’, security forces have detained at least 1,000 minors over the past year and a half. Minors as young as 11-years-old are arbitrarily arrested during clashes between protestors and police.
In December 2014, the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence announced that around 600 minors were being held in a detention camp in the town of Banha, north of Cairo. However, the Interior Ministry denied such accusations and the existence of the camp.
Article 80 of the Egyptian Constitution, which was ratified via popular referendum in January 2014, stipulates that children “shall be provided with legal assistance and detained in appropriate locations separate from those allocated for the detention of adults”.
