Galal El-Behairy, an Egyptian poet and lyricist, has been held since 5 March 2018 and has reportedly been tortured and beaten in detention. He initially faced charges of ‘joining a terrorist group’, ‘disseminating false news’, and ‘insulting the President’ for lyrics he had written for the song Balaha, which was performed and disseminated online by exiled Egyptian singer Ramy Essam. The case was eventually dropped, but he remained in detention.
In a separate case, on 31 July 2018, El-Behairy was sentenced to three years imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 Egyptian Pounds by a military court on charges of ‘disseminating false news and rumours by writing a book containing false news and statements about the Egyptian armed forces’, and ‘insulting the Egyptian army by issuing a book containing phrases that offend the Egyptian army’. The sentence related to his book of poetry, The Finest Women on Earth, which challenged the official narrative around the Egyptian military and its relation to politics. Later, the Court confirmed the three-year sentence at the appeal stage and dropped the fine.
PEN International has reliably learned that his health has significantly deteriorated during his imprisonment, as a result of the poor prison conditions in which he is held, and the lack of adequate medical care. El-Behairy reportedly suffers from heart problems, high blood pressure, and acute depression.
In April 2022, President Abdelfattah Al-Sisi called for political dialogue, addressing the human rights situation in the country and reactivating the ‘Presidential Amnesty Committee’. The Committee was initially formed in 2016 to consider cases of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. However, nearly a year later, thousands of Egyptians remain arbitrarily imprisoned due to their legitimate practice of the right to freedom of expression. The authorities have imposed severe restrictions on freedom of expression, including on press freedom and social media: PEN International has documented numerous cases of writers, poets, journalists, and bloggers who have been arrested by the Egyptian authorities for peacefully expressing their opinions. Many of them face discriminatory treatment in jail, including the denial of reading and writing materials, restrictions or total denial to in-person family visits, refusal of opportunity to exercise outside their cells, and denial of many other legal rights guaranteed to prisoners under Egyptian law.
PEN calls on the Egyptian authorities to urgently and unconditioannly release the many writers who remain detained in violation of their right to freedom of expression.
