Egypt releases anti-torture 't-shirt prisoner'

A Cairo court on Thursday rejected the public prosecutor’s appeal to not release Mahmoud Mohammed, known in local media as the “t-shirt detainee”, and upheld the court’s previous judgement to release him and a friend immediately.

Mohammed was arrested along with his friend Islam Talaat after celebrating the third anniversary of the 25 January uprising in 2014. The pair have been held without trial ever since with the prosecutor trying to block their release at the 11th hour and called on them to stay behind bars until at the very least paying 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($115) each. 

The pair were picked up by police on 25 January 2014. Mohammed was wearing a scarf to commemorate the uprising and a t-shirt with the "Nation without Torture" slogan printed on it, and was arrested at a checkpoint along with Talaat by security forces. Aged 18 at the time, Mohammed and Talaat spent more than two years without trial or official sentencing at the notorious Tora prison.

Under Egyptian law, the maximum limit for detention without trial is two years.

On Tuesday, the Cairo Criminal Court announced its decision to release Mohammed and Talaat, but the prosecution appealed this. 

“The prosecution appealed the decision, because it believes a boy wearing an anti-torture t-shirt is more dangerous than Mahmoud al-Zawahiri and Magdy Qorqor,” the teen's lawyer Mokhtar Mounir said, referring to two recently released Islamist leaders.

Mounir said that the prosecution’s appeal was in violation of the law, as both Mohammed and Talaat have been held in pre-trial detention since 25 January 2014.

The prosecution, Mounir said, considers Mohammed to be a threat to national security.

Various human rights groups such as Amnesty International had campaigned for Mohammed's release, and called on the public prosecutor to free him immediately and unconditionally.

“Mahmoud is one of many in Egypt’s prisons that are being held for months without charge or trial under renewable detention orders,” Amnesty wrote in 2015. “Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression and assembly.”

“Stop denying Mahmoud and others like him justice.”

Tareq Mohammed, Mahmoud’s older brother, had described him as “a child of the 25 January revolution” and said that the state had considered him a “terrorist” and “enemy of the nation”.

Tareq, also known as Tito, celebrated the court’s hearing on Thursday on Twitter.

“No more prison visits, no more prison, no more court sessions!” he tweeted joyously, before reminding people to remember other prisoners in Egypt’s jail like Mahmoud Abou Zeid, also known as Shawkan, the photo-journalist who has spent over two and a half years in detention without trial.