He had become in 2019 the first enemy of the Egyptian regime. A military court in the country sentenced Mohamed Ali, a famous businessman living in exile, to life in prison on Sunday (January 15th), according to state media.
Building contractor and actor, Mohamed Ali made himself known in 2019 via videos that went viral on social networks. He accused the president and the country’s military elite of corruption. Filmed from his Spanish exile, these videos had resulted, at the end of September of the same year, in rare demonstrations bringing together hundreds of people in Cairo and in several other cities of the country.
After these rallies, 4,000 people were arrested, the worst wave of repression since Mr. Sisi’s election in 2014, according to NGOs. Following these events, Mohamed Ali said he was tracked down and threatened, even if he was abroad.
On the regime’s blacklist
The 48-year-old man who has lived in exile in Barcelona since 2018 was sentenced by the regime to life imprisonment with 37 co-defendants. Several dozen other people were sentenced to terms ranging from five to fifteen years in prison, the official press said.
In addition, the businessman was placed, according to local media, on the blacklist of “terrorists” meaning he is banned from travel and his assets in Egypt are frozen.
This blacklisting is one of the regime’s tactics to prevent opponents from leaving the country, human rights defenders regularly accuse.
In Egypt, the judgments of the special courts, generally in charge of cases of “terrorism”, cannot be appealed. If Mr. Ali, who lives in Spain, does not go to Egypt, however, he may not suffer from these decisions.
More than 65,000 political prisoners in Egypt
The Egyptian regime is constantly singled out for its more than 65,000 political detainees, according to NGOs, its muzzling of the press and social networks as well as its relentless repression of all forms of opposition, from Islamists to liberals.
Demonstrating in Egypt is thus almost impossible according to the law, making parades very rare. But in 2019, Mr. Ali had managed to mobilize troops from a distance after a first very sharp devaluation of the currency in 2016, which had strongly affected the population and increased discontent with Mr. Sisi’s regime.
Today, taken by the throat by its creditors and hit hard by the war between Russia and Ukraine – its main suppliers of wheat – Egypt is sinking into its worst economic crisis. Supply difficulties and impoverishment raise fears of the explosion of a serious social crisis in the country which will celebrate on January 25 the 12th anniversary of the ” revolution “ who overthrew Hosni Mubarak in the wake of the “Arab Spring”.