- EGYPT
- March 20, 2015
- 5 minutes read
Students Against The Coup – Mansoura University: First Girl in Egypt Military Trial
Details of the case where the first girl to be tried in a military court in Egypt (a young university student) has just been thrown in a junta jail and ordered to pay LE50,000 (approximately US$6600):
– Name: Esraa Maher Al-Hindawi
– Faculty Year/Level: Second Year – Faculty of Science (Mansoura University)
– Department: Chemistry
– Date of arrest: Tuesday – October 28, 2014
– Place of arrest: At faculty gate, as she went in to attend a regular chemistry lecture
– Arrest details: At seven minutes past one in the afternoon, coup security forces, supported by hired thugs, stormed the Faculty of Science mosque, insulting female students with a stream of extremely innocuous expletives, and then subjected the girls to the most intimate body search.
A short distance away, student Esraa Al-Hindawi was randomly arrested just outside her faculty gates. She was taken to an unknown location where she was held incommunicado. Coup security authorities refused to tell her family where she was being held, until well after seven in the evening.
– Detention: Esraa was detained for 9 days in Mansoura’s main police station. Then, she was moved over to Menyat Al-Nasr detention center on November 5, 2014.
– Prosecution Service sessions and extension of remand in custody: Esraa’s first Prosecution session was on Wednesday, November 29th 2014. She was detained on remand without bail bending ‘investigations’ for 15 days.
Then, a second session was held on Tuesday, November 12th 2014. Her remand was renewed again, for another 15 days.
A third Prosecution Service session was held on Monday, November 24th 2014 where her remand was yet again renewed for 15 days – this was the third consecutive extension of her pre-trial detention.
Esraa’s fourth Prosecution Service session was on Monday, December 8th 2014. Like in previous Prosecution Service sessions, her remand was further extended by another 15 days.
Other Prosecution Service sessions followed, on and after December 22nd 2014. Esraa’s remand was extended by yet another 15 days, and then another 15 days and then another 15 days.
Today (Thursday, March 19th), Esraa and many of her fellow university students were sentenced by a military court to two years in prison and LE50,000 fine, each.
