Egypt court sentences lawyer to 10 years for Facebook posts

CAIRO – An Egyptian criminal court has sentenced a rights lawyer to 10 years in prison and five years of house arrest and a social media ban for using Facebook to “destabilize the general order” and “harm national unity and social peace.”

The Alexandria-based lawyer, Mohamed Ramadan, was sentenced using a controversial 2015 counter-terrorism law, days after President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi declared a three-month state of emergency. The law determines terrorism to include a wide range of actions including propagating ideas and beliefs calling for the use of violence via social media.

Ramadan did not attend the session and was sentenced in absentia. On his Facebook page, he wrote that the verdict was issued by “the judiciary of the counter-revolution.”

He did not clarify whether he would turn himself in.