• EGYPT
  • June 8, 2015
  • 4 minutes read

Ibrahim Yamani.. Another Mohamed Soltan, Minus Dual Citizenship

Ibrahim Yamani.. Another Mohamed Soltan, Minus Dual Citizenship

Ibrahim Yamani, a final year medical student (Faculty of Medicine – Azhar University), was detained 662 days ago, and jailed in the notorious Natrun Prison. Today (Monday), Yamani is in the 419th day of a hunger strike he started to protest inhumanly poor prison conditions.


On August 17, 2013 Yamani was rounded up – with hundreds of peaceful protesters, in the siege of Fateh Mosque, following the coup security forces’ massacres of non-violent protesters in Rabaa and Nahda squares. Along with other protesters, Yamani was trapped inside Fateh Mosque for 12 hours, under a hail of bullets and tear gas that never stopped all night although coup forces knew there were women and children inside.


Then, the siege police commander asked for a delegate to negotiate with the protesters a "safe" exit. Medical student Yamani volunteered and persuaded protesters to leave, after agreeing with the police to allow them safe passage out of the mosque. However, Yamani was the first to be arrested. He was held in custody in Azbakeya Police Station, then transferred to Natrun Prison.


Today, Yamani has completed 650 days of solitary confinement, alone in a squalid prison cell. He does not have another nationality like Mohamed Solan – famous for the longest hunger strike in coup prisons – in order to give up his Egyptian nationality in return for his freedom, in order to finish his education and help the sick and the needy.


Yamani is known among his friends as the revolutionary doctor and the revolutionary student, because he participated in the January 2011 Revolution, and never left Tahrir Square – especially his duty in the field hospital there, and also participated in the Mohamed Mahmoud Street, the Abbasseya, and the Cabinet building demonstrations.


In a letter from Yamani, posted by the ‘Students Against the Coup’ movement on its webpage, he says: "Do you know that I miss you so much, my homeland! I miss freedom, dignity and justice in your land, my homeland. My heart no longer holds anything but pain and sorrow for you, my homeland.


"But I feel, next to that pain, hopes that revive and reinvigorate my heart and life. But those hopes soon wear off, occasionally coming back to fight off the pain and despair."


In his letter, Yamani further said: "Every night I wait for the dark, where I tell God about the pain that crushes my heart. Then, I long for daylight, perhaps the shining sun could destroy the injustice that spread throughout my homeland.


"My heart will stop whining soon, God willing, when my homeland restores its freedoms and rights. Soon, we will win; and freedom, dignity and justice will prevail throughout, my homeland."