Photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid (known as Shawkan) is passionate about taking pictures. He is paying the price for his peaceful work and is on trial. If found guilty of the charges against him, for which no evidence has been presented, he faces the death penalty.
Shawkan has spent more than three years and a half in arbitrary detention. For what? Taking photographs and exercising his right to freedom of expression.
Shawkan has been detained since 14 August 2013, when arrested for photographing the violent dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in in Cairo. He has been held in detention for over 1290 days. He has been unlawfully held beyond the two-year maximum pre-trial detention for those facing charges that could lead to life imprisonment or the death penalty, as set out in Egypt’s Code of Criminal Procedures. His ongoing detention is illegal under Egypt’s own national law.
Shawkan should never have been arrested and detained. He, and other journalists falling victim to Egypt’s ongoing attacks on press freedoms, should be free to peacefully fulfil their work as journalists, guaranteed by their right to freedom of expression. Egypt ranked as the third country in the world with the highest number of journalists behind bars in 2016, after Turkey and China, according to the New York-based NGO, Committee to Protect Journalists.
Shawkan is considered by Amnesty International to be a prisoner of conscience, whose liberty, in what constitutes a fragrant disregard for human rights, has been taken away from him for more than 3.5 years.