Ahmed Douma
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Ahmed Douma (  ; born 11 September 1988) is an Egyptian activist and blogger, who has been arrested under each consecutive Egyptian government in recent years. He is a member of the
Egyptian Popular Current The Egyptian Popular Current ( ') is a movement in Egypt, created after the 2012 presidential elections by former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi. The movement was formed on 21 September 2012. The movement formed the Popular Current Party ...
. Having been in prison since 2013, he was released on 19 August 2023 following a presidential pardon.


Political activism and arrests

In February 2009, Ahmed Douma, then a student at Tanta University, was arrested at the border to the
Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
, after he had entered it with a group of anti-war activists who wanted to express their solidarity with the
Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
people. He was tried before a military court for illegally crossing the border and was sentenced to one year in prison. During his transport to the prison and during interrogations there, Douma was tortured and threatened with the use of false confessions to obtain further convictions against him. In January 2012, he was detained and charged with inciting violence against the army and encouraging attacks on public property, following the Cabinet clashes in December 2011. During these clashes, 12 people were killed and 815 were injured, when police and military forces cracked down on a sit-in outside the Cabinet office in
Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
, which was organized by activists protesting against the appointment of Kamal Ganzouri as prime minister by the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF; , ', also Higher Council of the Armed Forces) is a Statutory authority, statutory body of between 20 and 25 Senior officer, senior Officer (armed forces), officers of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and ...
. In April 2013, Douma was arrested after calling president Mohammed Morsi a killer and a criminal, and on 3 June Douma was convicted to six months in prison for insulting the president. However, Douma appealed the verdict, and on 6 July another court ordered his release without bail. On 3 December 2013, Douma was arrested at his home, following a protest organized by the ''No Military Trials for Civilians'' campaign in defiance of a new restrictive protest law, which was violently dispersed by the police. On 22 December, he was sentenced, together with Ahmed Maher and Mohammed Adel, to three years in prison with hard labour and a fine of LE50,000 for his participation in protests illegal under the new protest law. In an attempt to reverse the verdict, Douma joined a hunger strike with other detainees who were imprisoned under the new protest law. However, he had to end it due to his deteriorating health. The verdict was condemned by several Egyptian
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
organisations, as well as by the
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and the
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. On 23 December, the Road of the Revolution Front organized a demonstration in Cairo in solidarity with the three activists. Hamdeen Sabahi has censured the court conviction sentencing Maher, Mohamed Adel, and Douma to three years in prison and a fine of LE50,000 and maintains that Interim President Adly Mansour should issue these and other detained individuals a pardon. The Constitution Party has expressed solidarity with the detainees and their families and requested that the interim President Adly Mansour issue a pardon to Ahmed Maher, Mohammed Adel, and Ahmed Douma, as well as to Loay Abdel Rahman, Omar Hussein, Islam Ahmed, and Nasser Ibrahim. On 4 February 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Douma to life imprisonment and fined him LE17 million. In January 2019, his sentence for participating in the 2011 protests against the administration of President
Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011 and the 41st Prime Minister of Egypt, prime minister from 1981 to ...
was reduced to 15 years. On 3 December 2022, Douma completed a decade in arbitrary detention. His family raised multiple requests for a presidential pardon and reconsideration of the activist's case. The family renewed their call in 2022. On 24 November 2022, the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...
also called for the Egyptian authorities to immediately release the unjustly detained prisoners, including Douma. Dozens of human rights organizations and groups, including
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...
, MENA Rights Group, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), and others, also urged the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Douma. Douma was pardoned by Egyptian president
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and 201 ...
on 19 August 2023.


Writing

Douma wrote about his incarceration experiences, dreams, and aspirations in his poetry. He published his poetry collection ''Soutak Talee'' (Your Voice Is Heard) in 2012 with Diwan publishing house, where he shared his revolutionary poetry and his experiences with several youth and reformist movements in Egypt. He documented the dates and locations during his imprisonment at the end of this poem, in which he told his story of imprisonment and oppression. Also, his poetry collection ''Curly'' was printed and published during the 2021 Cairo International Book Fair through EL Maraya publishing house. However, security officials barged into the publishing house section during the fair and asked them to take Douma's poetry collection down.


See also

* Alaa Abd El-Fattah * Mohammed Adel * Ahmed Harara * Ahmed Maher *
Kefaya Kefaya ( ''kefāya'', , "enough") is the unofficial moniker of the Egyptian Movement for Change ( ''el-Haraka el-Masreyya men agl el-Taghyeer''), a grassroots coalition which prior to the 2011 revolution drew its support from across Egypt's po ...


References


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Douma, Ahmed 1985 births Egyptian bloggers Egyptian democracy activists Egyptian dissidents Living people People of the Egyptian revolution of 2011