Ramy Shaath speaks at full speed, perhaps because the voice of many who cannot speak is heard. The Egyptian-Palestinian activist owes a debt to all those men with whom he shared captivity in the Egyptian prison of Tora, where he was imprisoned for two and a half years, without trial. They were more than 900 days in a cell of 23 square meters in which there were 32 prisoners, with a hole in the ground as a bathroom, between insects and rats, under constant torture. Last January, Shaath, 49, left that hell behind when he was released thanks to international pressure and especially from France, the country of his wife.
The activist, who was stripped of Egyptian nationality in exchange for his freedom, is fighting to "break the silence" about the abuses of the Abdul Fatah al Sisi regime, which is preparing to host the COP27 climate summit. A despicable "greenwash" of a criminal regime, denounces the activist, who participated on Friday in an act organized by Amnesty International before the Egyptian embassy in Madrid.
Tell us about the conditions of your captivity.
The cell measured 23 square meters. Exactly 7.65 by 2.85 meters. We were 18 to 32 people in that tiny room. At times we had to sleep on our sides to fit everyone. We slept on the floor. The cell was full of insects of all kinds, from bed bugs to rats and sometimes snakes. We had a three foot by three foot bathroom, basically a hole in the floor and a cold shower on top. We had absolutely no medical care. I have seen many people die due to lack of medicine or torture. Prisoners were punished with solitary confinement for the most insignificant reasons: one meter cell by meter and a half. It's dark, they give you a bucket to relieve yourself and a bottle of water, and they keep you locked up there for two weeks. A friend of mine died three days later, he couldn't take it. It is inhuman treatment. They torture people in their bodies and souls.
How was your arrest?
On July 5, 2019, my house was raided by armed soldiers. In Egypt we call them after midnight visitors, because they always arrive at that time. Without even identifying themselves or showing an arrest warrant, they took my wife, who is French, and illegally deported her without her being able to call her consulate. They took me to a place of forced disappearance. That is, a place where it is not legal to hold you, where neither your family nor your lawyers know where you are, where they even refuse to say that they have you. They kept me there, blindfolded, handcuffed, and tied to a wall, for a few days. They are places where there is a torture party every night, from nine at night to five in the morning, where they abuse and torture people and ask them the most ridiculous questions like: "Tell us the bad things you have done" or "Tell us names of people who were with you at a demonstration or in a Facebook group." Then they took me to the security prosecutor, who is basically a security officer in a prosecutor's outfit, who questioned me. It was the only interrogation throughout the two and a half years that I was arrested supposedly under investigation. A single interrogation, 45 minutes long, in which he asked me about my opinion on the 2011 revolution and who I voted for in the presidential elections. I started to get angry and asked, "Why am I being arrested?" He told me that they accused me of being a member of a terrorist organization. I laughed, because it's the cocktail accusation they use against all activists, politicians, journalists and lawyers. “What is that terrorist organization?” I asked. He replied that he couldn't tell me. He then added that they also accused me of spreading lies and rumors against the state on social media. And I laughed again, because I don't have social networks. He said: “But you are a politician, people know you”. I said, "Well, I get interviewed a lot on TV." So he said, "Okay, we'll trade social media for television."
He was charged with terrorism, but charges were never formally filed.
I was never tried or charged, indeed. They just put me in jail, like 60,000 other Egyptians who are in prison for political reasons. I've seen the guy who's in jail. Many are activists, lawyers, journalists or politicians, but there are also thousands of ordinary citizens, who are detained completely arbitrarily. Today a policeman can stop you in the street, confiscate your mobile and if he finds a comment or a joke against the regime on your Facebook account it is enough for you to be imprisoned as a terrorist. This is happening right now in Egypt. Since the military coup by General Al Sisi, no freedom of expression or political parties are allowed in Egypt. There are extrajudicial executions in Sinai and in the streets of Cairo. All media outlets are controlled by the military, and those that are not are simply banned. There are 650 prohibited media. There is no justice, the judicial processes are a pantomime, they have nothing to do with the law. Jailers like to remind you that there is no law that controls them: “We can kill you, we can torture you, we can invent other cases and lock you up indefinitely. We own you. We will do what we want with you”, they tell you. They don't even care about the procedures of the law. The ridiculous Egyptian law made by the military government limits detention without charge to two years. I was two and a half years. A judge was supposed to renew my detention every 45 days. Well, sometimes they took me after 90 days, other times after 70 days. Do not care. You don't even see the judge. They put you in a cubicle, where you don't hear or see the judge, and he doesn't see you either. He doesn't talk to you either. And so they renew your detention for two and a half years. This regime has created a Republic of Fear. We have to break the silence and tell the world the truth about what is happening in Egypt.
With what kind of prisoners have you shared captivity?
When I entered prison there were three annexes. One for the secular civil movement and two for the Islamic movement. They put me in with the laity, but I am a known activist and soon there were long queues of prisoners outside my cell, bringing me cigarettes, food and drink. So they moved me to the Islamic area. For nine months I was the only secular activist among Islamist prisoners. We disagree politically, but I have to say that no one I met in the Islamic or secular wing had committed a violent crime, they were all there for their political speech.
Did you coincide with any leader of the Muslim Brotherhood?
The ringleaders are in the high security Scorpion prison, which is another hell. In Tora, where I was, there were second-rate Islamist leaders. But I insist, the majority of prisoners, especially after 2020, were ordinary Egyptians. For example, I met a taxi driver who confided in me that he was working as a driver for a belly dancer. One night he was waiting for him to come out of his show and he was with three other taxi drivers chatting. They began to complain about the rise in fuel prices. A policeman heard him and took him to a police station, where he was tortured and then imprisoned for a year and a half without trial. I also met a doctor who was in jail because his nine-year-old son sang a traditional Egyptian song about a date at school one day, a nickname with which people make fun of Al Sisi. The school principal reported him. And his father was arrested. That doctor spent two and a half years in prison, without trial. He was going to judicial renewals of his arrest on behalf of his nine-year-old son, because the case was against the kid.
What kind of legitimacy does it mean for the Al Sisi regime to host COP27, which the main leaders of the planet are going to attend?
It is a green wash of Al Sisi's crimes. What sense does it make that a country in which its own people are not allowed to talk about their lives or their future is the one that organizes a summit to talk about the future of humanity? What is the point of giving this summit to a country that has environmental activists rotting in jail? Egypt is going to set up a golf course in Sharm el Sheikh for NGOs from all over the world who attend the summit to walk around, while Egyptian NGOs are arrested if they go outside. It's ridiculous. Its inhuman. And we ask the people who are going to attend to insist on the freedom of the detainees and to strip this regime of the legitimacy and greenwashing that this summit is.
Many Egyptian activists, from across the ideological spectrum, have been denouncing for years that Al Sisi's regime is worse than Mubarak's. Is it the lesson learned from the 2011 revolution?
Al Sisi was the head of military intelligence with Mubarak. It's basically the same regimen but much, much bloodier. Being a military intelligence guy, the only way he conceives of ruling is through oppression. In 2011 people came out to ask for freedom, dignity, social justice. But instead of learning that people should be given more freedom, more dignity, more justice, the conclusion he came to is that activists should be jailed, Islamist movements should be destroyed, coffee shops should be closed so that people don't meet to discuss politics and monitor Facebook so that no one organizes online anymore. They are the lessons that he learned, because he only understands oppression. It is undeniable: in these last seven years, the situation has become much worse than under Mubarak. We never reached this level of arrests, of torture, of total confiscation of the media, of total disregard for the law. In Mubarak's time there was still some kind of legal system that you could fall back on. Today there is none of that.
When Al Sisi carried out his coup in 2013, there was a substantial part of the population that supported him. What were the errors of the revolution?
I never supported Al Sisi. I didn't like the Muslim Brotherhood, but I knew we could democratically overthrow them. After so many years without political parties, we knew that people were not ready for democratic elections and that the Muslim Brotherhood had used God and religion to get votes. But that was changing, precisely thanks to the revolution, and people were becoming more aware of ideology and politics. The military regime did not want that and that is why at the beginning of the revolution the army allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood. They knew that if there was an Islamist regime in Egypt it would be easy to label them as terrorists and fundamentalists, while if the secular movement won the elections it would cost them much more. In the years of Islamist rule, the Muslim Brotherhood was not in charge, the country was still under the control of the old regime, which was dedicated to destroying stability and attacking the security of the people, cutting off electricity and creating all kinds of problems so that people opposed the Muslim Brotherhood. It is also true that the Muslim Brotherhood made many political mistakes, which made us demonstrate against them. But personally, I never wanted an army coup. He wanted a democratic change. It is true that when Al Sisi came to power some people, who were terribly afraid of the Islamists, supported military interference, not realizing that it would turn into a disaster like the one we have experienced in the last eight years. A disaster not only for human rights, but also for the economy. The army has completely confiscated the private sector. It controls 64% of our economy. In prison I was with the Thabit family, which owns one of the biggest companies in Egypt, the Juhayna food group. His father was arrested and asked to hand over his company to the army. He refused and so his brother was arrested. He continued to refuse and his son was arrested. By the time I got out of jail, they were trying to get me to agree to hand over 50% of the company. Now they're trying to get him to give them 20% and they'll set him free. This is the government we have. Foreign debt, which in 2013 was 34,000 million dollars, has skyrocketed to 160,000 million. Everything has been spent on corruption and bad projects, like a new capital and other glorious things for the regime, but nothing that produces, nothing that makes the economy grow. Egypt is on the verge of bankruptcy because of this regime.
You have much to thank Emmanuel Macron, whose intervention was key to his release. Isn't it contradictory that while he is pressuring the Egyptian regime to release a political prisoner, France is signing all kinds of military agreements with Al Sisi and receiving him in Paris?
I publicly thanked Macron for his support, as well as thousands of people around the world who campaigned for my release. That support gave me security, and I was not tortured and abused like so many other detainees. I thank Macron for having contributed to my release. But I realize that he is trying to wash his hands. One activist is not enough for the billions in arms contracts and the legitimacy he is giving this regime. Because of the information that the intelligence services have given to the Al Sisi regime. We cannot keep pressing activist after activist, we have to break. We need to hold this regime accountable and insist on human rights in Egypt as part of democratic change.
