We, the undersigned civil society organizations from around the world, call on Egyptian authorities to immediately release prominent activist, poet and political writer Ahmed Douma from pretrial detention and to stop their systematic campaign of judicial harassment against him.
On April 6, 2026, many in Egypt started the day with hopeful news following Egyptian authorities’ long over-due release of a number of detainees in political cases. Meanwhile, Ahmed Douma headed to the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) following a summons that he had received a few days prior. As has become the norm, he was not informed of the accusations being made about him or the subject of his interrogation. Hours into the interrogation, Ahmed’s lawyers learned that he was being accused of “publishing false news and statements inside and outside the country with the intent to disturb public peace and spread panic,” in relation to an article he had published in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “From a Prison Within the State to a State Within the Prison,” which uses examples from around the world to present an argument on why political imprisonment is destabilizing for the state. He was ordered into pretrial detention for four days pending Case No. 2449 of 2026 and has been in Egyptian authorities’ custody since.
Ahmed Douma has already spent over a decade in prison on politicized charges. In custody, he has been held in prolonged solitary confinement, denied adequate medical care, and subjected to treatment that Amnesty International describedas torture. His detention was found to be arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Though Ahmed was finally released in August 2023 on a presidential pardon, authorities have not relented, depriving him of the chance to rebuild his life. Since his release, Ahmed has been summoned by prosecutors on at least seven occasions for his social media posts, writings, and activism. He has been made to pay bail, totalling 230,000 Egyptian Pounds.
For Egyptian authorities to intensify their judicial harassment campaign of Ahmed by re-arresting him following a sustained campaign of seven interrogations is a severe escalation at a time during which Egyptian authorities should be doing the opposite — releasing the thousands long-held in pretrial detention and stopping the prosecution of those exercising their rights to free expression, assembly, and association. At a time when Egypt is purporting to be a mediator in global conflicts, it cannot continue to pursue these retaliatory prosecutions and these sustained campaigns to silence its population over critical content.
We, the undersigned organizations, call on Egyptian authorities to course correct and immediately release Ahmed Douma, drop all charges against him, and close Case No. 2449 of 2026 in its entirety. We call on Egyptian authorities to lift the travel ban that remains imposed on him, end all ongoing prosecutions, and stop exercising its arrest and prosecution powers to silence him for his exercise of free expression and defense of human rights.
List of Signatories
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