PROFILE | Egyptian political activist Ahmed Douma released after ten years in detention

After being imprisoned for 10 years, Egyptian political activist and poet Ahmed Douma was released on Saturday in a presidential pardon that included the names of 30 other intimates.

Douma was one of the political detainees whose release was a common request by political powers and oppositions for several years.

Born on September 11, 1985, in Beheira Governorate in Egypt’s Delta, Douma had studied computer science. His father was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, BBC reported.

His political career started when he was a member of the Kefaya (Enough) political movement, which was established in 2004 against late President Hosni Mubarak and the concept of inheritance of power, as Mubarak’s son Gamal was considered to likely take his father’s place at the time. He was also the founder of the 6th of April Movement, which was banned by the Egyptian authorities in 2014.

The 38-year-old activist was also one of the revolutionary leaders in the January 25 Revolution that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and ended his 30-year tenure. 

Douma was arrested on January 5, 2012, when he was 25 years old, in a case dubbed in the media as “the Cabinet Incidents,” in which 12 people were killed and more than 800 others were injured, but he was released three months later. He was re-arrested for the same case on December 3, 2013, after the anti-protest law was enacted during the term of former interim President Adly Mansour in 2013. He faced accusations of “gathering, possessing knives and Molotov cocktails, assaulting members of the armed forces and police, burning the Scientific Complex, and assaulting government buildings” in 2011.

During the case’s trial sessions in November 2014, Douma was handed down a three-year imprisonment for contempt of court.

In February 2015, a Cairo criminal court sentenced Douma and 229 others to life imprisonment (25 years) and a fine of 17 million EGP for the damages occurred during the assault on public utilities. The court also sentenced 39 juveniles to 10 years in prison.

Douma and other defendants appealed this ruling, and in 2017, the Court of Cassation accepted the appeal and ordered a retrial to be held before a Cairo criminal court. 

In January 2020, the second Cairo criminal court handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of 6 million EGP against Douma and co-defendants for the same charges in the same case. However, Douma and other defendants appealed this ruling as well.

In July 2020, the Egyptian Court of Cassation upheld the sentence of 15 years in prison against Douma and a fine of 6 million EGP.

During his imprisonment, Douma was subjected to torture and solitary confinement for “four years and eight months,” causing him to suffer from high blood pressure, insomnia, constant headaches, severe depression, and panic attacks, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Documenting his experiences of detention in poetry, Douma wrote a poetry collection titled “Soutak Talee” (Your Voice is Heard). His second poetry collection, “Culry”, was published by Al Maraya Publishing House and on sale at the 2021 Cairo International Book Fair, but the security forces removed it from the shelves, Pen International said. 

After being released, Douma said that the happiness is temporary because other political activists like Alaa Abdel Fattah, former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Mohamed Oxygen, Hoda Abdel Moneim, and others are still in prison.