Ahmed Douma’s campaign condemns the decision of the Supreme State Security Prosecution to detain the writer, poet, and political activist Ahmed Douma for four days pending investigation in Case No. 2449 of 2026, on charges of spreading false news, citing an article titled “A Prison Inside the State and a State Inside the Prison,” published in New Arab (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed), and a Facebook post exposing the use of permanent cell lighting in prisons as a tool of torment.
This case and the decision to detain Douma form part of a series of arbitrary actions he has faced since his release, preventing him from rebuilding his life or planning for his future. Since then, he has been subjected to a range of restrictions, including a travel ban imposed without legal basis, obstruction in obtaining essential official documents such as his national ID card, and barriers to enrolling in postgraduate programs at public universities. These constraints are further compounded by the stigma and labor market exclusion commonly faced by released political detainees.
These arbitrary measures have not stopped there, but have escalated into an increasingly punitive and surveillance-driven pattern. Over the past year and a half, Douma has been summoned before the prosecution in six separate cases, all tied to publication-related charges, and released each time on cumulative bail exceeding EGP 235,000. In this latest case, however, the prosecution has ordered his detention for four days pending investigation.
Douma is 37 years old. He has spent nearly twelve years of his life in prison, including ten consecutive years between 2013 and 2023, before being released by presidential pardon. He now faces imprisonment again after two and a half years of arbitrary restrictions that made clear he had never truly left prison, but had merely been transferred to a larger one – one in which he could not work, could not study, could not move freely, and could not plan for his future. He now faces detention once more, despite the fact that his public activity has been limited entirely to writing about his experience in prison and drawing attention to the conditions of his colleagues who remain in custody.
The campaign has welcomed the recent decisions to release a number of prisoners of conscience and calls for this process to continue until the file of prisoners of conscience is definitively closed. At the same time, it fears that the decision to imprison Ahmed Douma is aimed at distorting that picture and provoking a public that has allowed itself cautious optimism.The campaign therefore calls on the Egyptian authorities to ensure that the decision to detain Douma was not driven by personal vendettas unrelated to the national interest, at a moment when the country most urgently needs to consolidate its home front amid a world and a region in flames.
We also affirm that decisions to release prisoners of conscience must not be isolated gestures, but part of a coherent trajectory toward genuine reconciliation. We therefore call not only for the release of Ahmed Douma and other prisoners of conscience, but hold all parties responsible for articulating a comprehensive vision to bring the era of containing the revolution and its consequences to a close and to move forward.
We demand a comprehensive pardon for all those detained from the January Revolution to the present day; the suspension of newly filed cases used to recycle detainees back into detention; an end to all arbitrary restrictions and security surveillance imposed after release; and a firm halt to re-arrest, all within a clear framework that enables former detainees to return to their lives and exercise their rights as ordinary citizens.
Return Ahmed and all his fellow detainees to their lives and their futures.