The Egyptian authorities released the wife of the prominent imprisoned human rights defender, Mohamed El-Baqer, on Monday, hours after her arrest, after she published information on social media that her husband had been mistreated.
Prominent Egyptian lawyer Khaled Ali confirmed that Nematallah Hisham, Al-Baqer’s wife, had been released. “A blessing on the asphalt,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights website reported on Monday morning, quoting the wife’s family, Nematallah Hisham, that “a security force went to the family’s house in Maadi at around 3:30 a.m. Monday, arrested her, confiscated her mobile phone, and took her to an unknown destination.”
The initiative called for the “immediate release” of Hisham, who was arrested a few hours after she visited her husband.
The initiative stated that Hisham “revealed, after the visit, on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, that Al-Baqer and his colleagues in the ward, Muhammad Al-Qassas, Muhammad Ibrahim (known as) Oxygen, Ahmed Doma, and Hamid Siddiq, were beaten, ill-treated, and detained in solitary discipline cells last week, between 10 and 13 April.” .
Hisham wrote on her Twitter account after her release, “I promise you, next time, I will take a breath and calm down before I worry you with me… so that I will not be dramatic in my words, and the words will be rational and not emotional.”
In December 2021, an Egyptian court sentenced Al-Baqer to four years in prison, after convicting him of “disseminating false news”, which is the same case in which the prominent prisoner of conscience in Egypt, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Al-Baqer was arrested in September 2019.
International human rights organizations accuse Egypt of abusing dissidents and human rights activists.
Human rights organizations estimate that the number of political detainees in Egypt is about 60,000 since President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi took over the country in 2014 after the army overthrew the late Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
Almost a year ago, when Sisi decided to reconstitute the presidential pardon committee, Egypt has witnessed a wave of releases of dozens of prisoners of conscience, but human rights organizations are calling for more.
