Egypt court jails ex-opposition MP Elaimy for 5 years: family

An emergency court on Wednesday sentenced former MP Ziad El-Elaimy, a prominent figure in Egypt's 2011 revolution, to five years in jail for charges including "spreading false news", his mother said.

Ikram Youssef told AFP that journalists Hisham Fuad and Hossam Moniss, who are also politicians, were handed four-year prison terms, while two activists were sentenced to three years with hard labour, in a decision that cannot be appealed.

The verdicts were only announced after the defendants and their families had left the courtroom, she added.

Elaimy, a lawyer by profession, has also been investigated over efforts to form a so-called "coalition of hope" opposition alliance to run in elections last year.

A key figure of the popular uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak, Elaimy was arrested in June 2019 and added last year to a terrorism list.

He was charged with joining the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been outlawed since the 2013 overthrow of Egypt's democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi.

Rights group Amnesty International condemned the court rulings, saying the three politicians had been "detained for over two years without trial simply because they sought to form a parliamentary coalition" last year.

"All involved in the 'Hope Coalition' were subjected to a litany of human rights violations, including arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, torture and intimidation," Amnesty's Philip Luther said in a statement.

"These politicians and activists should never have been arrested in the first place and yet they have been convicted and sentenced to prison on charges related to their legitimate criticism of the Egyptian authorities."

Luther urged the authorities to "cease sham trials by emergency courts which fail to respect international fair trial standards, including the right to appeal".

The authorities have arrested thousands of Morsi supporters since the Islamist's ouster, as well as secular activists, journalists, lawyers and academics.

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