Political activists Ahmed Douma, Ahmed Maher, and Mohamed Adel were sentenced in absentia to six months in prison on charges of assaulting a police officer in 2014 while detained and on trial.
Douma’s wife, Nourhan Hefzy, told Daily New Sunday that her husband and his colleagues were handed official notes on Thursday of the imprisonment sentence they received in absentia.
On 10 March, during a trial session for the trio appealing their convictions for illegal protesting, rioting, and thuggery among other charges, the defendants demanded the handcuffs taken off their wrists while in court. Security personnel rejected the demand and “beat the defendants”.
The incident was recorded in the court log, according to the defence lawyer Khaled Ali. However a report was filed by security personnel against the trio claiming that they assaulted the security force.
Hefzy told Daily News Egypt that she and Maher’s family are set to take legal action on Sunday against the absentia verdict.
She wrote earlier in a Facebook post on Saturday with the details her last visit to prison. She wrote that her husband refused to sign the official note and filed a report for two reasons: “The intervention of state security in moving the case secretly to hurdle procedures of compulsory pardon for my colleagues according to the new law and the plotting from the general prosecution by moving the case ahead, acquiring a verdict in absentia despite their knowledge of the defendants’ whereabouts, and ignoring the main part of the case which is assaulting the defendants.”
Douma is serving 31 years of imprisonment sentences in different cases over charges that include attacking the cabinet building and security personnel and burning the Scientific Institute in Cairo in 2011, illegal protesting, insulting judiciary, and rioting.
Founder of 6 April Movement Ahmed Maher and one group leader Mohamed Adel are serving three years in prison since December 2013 over the aforementioned case.
