Rejection of the petition filed by Ms. Mahienour El-Massry

On September 21, 2015, the El Raml Misdemeanour Court of Appeal in Alexandria rejected the petition filed by Ms. Mahienour El-Massry and two co-defendants to suspend the implementation of their sentence until the Court of Cassation hears the appeal of their case.

Ms. Mahienour El-Massry, a human rights lawyer and winner of the 2014 Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize, was sentenced to 15 months in prison on May 31. She was arrested on May 11, 2015, while attending the first hearing of her appeal trial challenging the originally imposed two-year sentence.

She was found guilty of several offenses, including “protesting without authorisation”, “damaging police property”, “attacking security forces” and “threatening public security” in relation to the events of March 2013, when she had gone to the El-Raml police station in Alexandria, along with four other lawyers, in order to defend demonstrators who had been arrested after clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi factions.