Egypt releases award-winning photojournalist jailed since 2013
CAIRO (Reuters) -
Egyptian authorities on Monday released a photojournalist who spent more than
five years in jail after covering a 2013 sit-in that ended with security forces
killing hundreds of protesters.
Mahmoud Abu Zeid,
also known as Shawkan, was detained in 2013 while taking pictures as security
forces broke up the sit-in by supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president
Mohamed Mursi.
“I can’t describe
how I feel ... I am free,” he told Reuters by phone after being released at
dawn on Monday.
Shawkan, whose
case had been highlighted by the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO and human rights
groups, was released because he had already served out his term before being
sentenced. But he must still spend his nights for the next five years at a
police station, a penalty he said he would challenge.
He vowed to
continue with his work, saying: “All journalists are at risk of being arrested
or killed while doing their work. I am not the first and I will not be the
last.”
The violent
breakup of the sit-in was a key moment in the turmoil that followed the 2011
uprising, as the military led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi moved to assert its
control after forcing out Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected head of state.
Sisi was elected
president the following year and has overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent
in which thousands of Islamist opponents, as well as scores of liberal
activists and journalists have been imprisoned. Sisi and his supporters say
they needed to stabilise the country following the upheaval triggered by the
2011 uprising.
The government
says many protesters at the 2013 sit-in were armed and that eight members of
the security forces were among those killed.
MASS TRIAL
Shawkan was
charged with belonging to a banned group and possessing firearms. He was
sentenced to five years in prison last September in a mass trial which saw 75
people sentenced to death and more than 600 others to jail terms.
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Shawkan denied the
charges against him, saying he was simply providing freelance coverage of the
protest for a British-based photo agency.
UNESCO awarded him
its 2018 Press Freedom Prize and said his detention was an abuse of human
rights.
Amnesty
International said in a statement on Monday that Shawkan “should never have
been forced to spend a single minute behind bars – let alone five and a half
years”.
It described the
requirement that he spend all his nights for the next five years as a
“ludicrous” restriction of his liberty and said it should be lifted
immediately.
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