33 human rights organizations worldwide, including the World Movement for Democracy, recently issued a joint statement calling on the Egyptian government to immediately and unconditionally release prominent democracy advocate and former spokesperson of the April 6 Youth Movement, Mohamed Adel. Since August 18, 2024, Adel has been on a hunger strike in protesting the Egyptian authorities’ refusal to deduct his pretrial detention period from his four-year sentence. Adel remained in pretrial detention form June 2018 until September 2023 — when the most recent sentence was issued — contravening the legally-permissible time limit for pretrial detention of 24 months, set by the Egyptian Criminal Procedure Code. The signatory organizations also called for an end to arbitrary detention and judicial harassment by Egyptian authorities to silence activists and citizens exercising their right to free expression.

Read the full statement here.