Egyptian Military Court Sentences El-Sissi Critic to 5 Years in Prison

CAIRO — A military court on Tuesday sentenced a former government anti-corruption czar to five years in prison over incendiary claims about documents said to incriminate Egypt’s leaders, his lawyers and state news media said.

The sentence levied against the official, Hesham Genena, who had served under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi until 2016 when he became one of the president’s sharpest critics, signaled that the harsh crackdown on the opposition that preceded last month’s election was set to continue.

Genena was one of several opposition figures detained before the vote, effectively clearing the field for el-Sissi, who ultimately faced a single token candidate and won with 97 percent of valid votes. All of the opposition figures remain in jail, including Sami Annan, a former army chief whose campaign lasted four days before he was arrested.

Genena, a senior figure in Annan’s campaign, was arrested in March after he said in an interview with HuffPost Arabi that Annan possessed documents that could incriminate Egypt’s “leadership.” Genena said the papers were in safekeeping outside Egypt, but he did not specify what they were.

He was charged with spreading false news about the military that endangered national security. The HuffPost Arabi journalist who interviewed him, Moataz Wadnan, was also taken into custody.

In a statement, Amnesty International denounced Genena’s trial and sentencing as “another example of the shameless silencing of anyone who is critical of the Egyptian authorities.”

Nathan Brown, an Egypt scholar at George Washington University, said in an email the issue might not be “criticism per se, but the threat to provide information that would be highly embarrassing to the military as an institution and to el-Sissi personally.”

“He is not merely being discredited; he is being muzzled and punished,” Brown said of Genena.

During the election campaign, el-Sissi’s supporters made a concerted effort to mobilize voters — using incentives like free groceries and small cash payments — widely taken as a sign of the president’s desire for a strong mandate to usher in constitutional changes that could extend his term in office.

There has been little talk of such changes since then, but Egyptian officials have signaled they intend to continue with an uncompromising approach that brooks little dissent.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate Islamist who ran in the 2012 presidential contest, continues to be detained, a sign of how little space exists for opposition voices.

On Monday, the Foreign Ministry denounced the decision by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, to award its annual press freedom prize to Mahmoud Abu Zeid, a photojournalist also known as Shawkan who has been detained without charge for 4 1/2 years.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Abu Zeid, accused UNESCO of “disregard for the rule of law” in bestowing the award on a prisoner. Human rights groups say the journalist is typical of thousands of Egyptians held for months, often years, without trial in brimming prisons.

More recent investigations targeting journalists have further chilled free speech.

Last week, the former editor-in-chief of Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely read newspapers, was released on bail. He is being investigated along with eight journalists at the paper for a headline in their election coverage.

The case was instigated by Samir Sabry, a private lawyer who has brought numerous cases against el-Sissi’s critics in the news media. Separately, the editor-in-chief of a website that translated a New York Times article on the election remains in custody.

Genena, a former judge, headed Egypt’s Central Auditing Organization until he was fired by el-Sissi in 2016 after he estimated that official graft had cost Egypt $76 billion over a three-year period.

After signing up for Annan’s short-lived election campaign in January, Genena was badly beaten outside his home by men he described as government thugs. The police said the men had gotten into a fight with Genena over a traffic accident.

Genena’s lawyers say they will appeal the five-year sentence. “This is what happens to all those who choose the path of justice and struggle,” one said in a Facebook post.