Cairo: 17 February 2020
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said that the rule of law in Egypt has entered today a new assessment. As required by law, journalist Moataz Wadnan has to be released since he completed yesterday two years in pretrial detention, which is the maximum limit for remand detention. This means that his current detention deems totally illegal and if it continues, claims of respecting the rule of law in Egypt will be nothing but false allegations and lies.
Prisoner of conscience “Moataz Wadnan” was arrested on 17 February 2018, after he conducted an interview with another prisoner of conscience; Hisham Geneina, former head of Egypt’s Central Auditing Authority (CAA), who was subjected to a suspicious physical attacked several days before.
Wadnan was arrested because the interview included claims of the complicity of some government officials in corruption amid the turmoil the country witnessed following the January Revolution.
Moataz Wadnan has announced several times that he is subjected to ill-treatment and beatings in prison, which made him go on a hunger strike more than once. But no one has been punished for these attacks although Wadnan mentioned the names of those who violated his rights throughout his detention. Today, by virtue of the Criminal Procedure Law, which explicitly sets the maximum limit for remand detention at two years, the ongoing detention of Moataz Wadnan becomes, hence, illegal, putting the rule of law in Egypt- or what’s left of it- under a new serious test. So, will Moataz Wadnan be released or will his detention continue in a clear violation of the rule of law?
