Free Ashraf Omar and all political prisoners in Egypt

For a year and five months, Egyptian journalist Ashraf Omar has been languishing in an Egyptian prison.

In the early morning hours of July 22, 2024, Ashraf Omar was arrested in Cairo and taken to an undisclosed location. Security forces searched the house, arrested Omar, blindfolded him, and confiscated his digital devices. During his interrogation, prosecutors questioned Omar about cartoons he had published and accused him of “spreading false news”, “misusing social media” and “joining an illegal group.”

Since then, he had been held in pretrial detention, which is a typical mechanism of the Egyptian state to hold political prisoners indefinitely.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has called on Attorney General Mohamed Shawky to immediately release him and drop all charges against him and other journalists imprisoned for carrying out their work or exercising their constitutional right to freedom of expression.

In a statement issued last month, EIPR noted that the latest decision to renew Omar’s detention came just days after a UN statement issued on September 22, in which several UN human rights experts expressed their deep concern about Omar’s continued detention and the widespread use of counter-terrorism legislation in Egypt to silence artists and journalists and restrict freedom of expression.

In late November 2025, Omar was referred to criminal court after one and a half years in pretrial detention. He is facing charges of “joining a terrorist group to further its goals.” Omar’s transfer took place without prior notice to his legal team, and he himself was not permitted to read the charges against him while being asked to sign his referral order. His wife, Nada Mougheeth, attests that Omar has committed no crime and that he himself remains resilient.

Omar’s arrest is not an isolated incident. The Egyptian state apparatus is notorious for arbitrarily arresting, torturing, and even killing journalists and any critical voices. The Egyptian state attempts to silence opposition through draconian measures. In the last nine months, this has increasingly targeted pro-Palestinian activists. The regime has arrested countless people for taking to the streets in support of Palestine or expressing their solidarity.

The German government is an active supporter of the Egyptian military dictatorship. In 2021, the German government sent weapons worth over four billion euros to Egypt, almost half of its total arms exports.

In March 2024, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed an eight-billion-dollar “aid package.” Just a few weeks earlier, Egypt had concluded a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan of over $8 billion: “The deal with the IMF is linked to economic reforms, including the floating of the Egyptian pound and a significant increase in the key interest rate.” These agreements must be viewed in the context of the genocide in Gaza, for which the EU is complicit. Germany increased its arms exports to Israel tenfold last year and needs Egypt to block the border with Rafah and condone the genocide in Gaza.

German support for the military dictatorship of al-Sisi only leads to further state arbitrariness, destabilization, and oppression.

We demand the immediate release of journalist Ashraf Omar and the thousands of political prisoners in Egyptian jails.