- EGYPT
- March 17, 2014
- 2 minutes read
Egypt Journalist Movement Condemns Military Trial of Human Rights Activist Khaled Hamza
The ‘Journalists For Reform’ (JFR) movement in Egypt denounced the referral of Khalid Hamza, rights activist and founder of Ikhwanweb – the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website, together with four other civilian detainees to a military trial scheduled to start on Monday, March 17, weeks after including Hamza in another unjust trial of a number of journalists and media professionals in lawsuit No. 317 dealing with the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in camps.
JFR demanded the immediate release of Khalid Hamza on grounds of ill health. He suffers several health problems, including unstable heart condition and needs special medical attention. JFR holds coup authorities fully responsible for Hamza’s life, affirming that his remaining in custody pending investigation into evidently politicized false charges amounts to slow death.
JFR pointed that Khaled Hamza is a victim of the coup’s opinion guillotine and the massacre of the press being executed vengefully by coup authorities hostile to free press and all forms of dissent, amid total silence from the Supreme Council of the Press and the Press Syndicate board.
JFR stressed that unjust military trials of civilians, including journalists and media workers, such as Ahmed Abu-Deraa, Khaled Hamza and Amr Qazaz, are null and void, and are strongly denounced by human rights activists and organizations.
