Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah is given bail
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Version 0 of 1. Egypt's most prominent activist, who is facing a retrial on a 15-year prison sentence for violating the country's draconian protest law, has been granted release on bail. Lawyer Mohammed Abdel-Aziz said Alaa Abd El Fattah – a blogger and vocal government critic since mid-2000 – had been released on bail of 5,000 Egyptian pounds (£430) along with two other activists. Abdel-Aziz said Abd El Fattah and his two fellow defendants should walk out of prison on Tuesday once paperwork has been completed. He added that the judge presiding over the retrial had stepped down at the request of defence lawyers. "The judge said in his reasons for stepping down that it was prompted by a show of disrespect to court," Abdel-Aziz added. Last week, during the latest court session, Egyptian prosecutors presented a home video of Abd El Fattah's wife dancing as evidence against him, prompting an outcry from his lawyers that the material was irrelevant and defamatory. Most of the evidence presented consisted of video clips from private TV stations showing various protests and police chasing unidentified civilians, although no scenes or footage of Abd El Fattah or any other defendant in the case were shown. Abd El Fattah's sentence was the harshest given to secular activists amid an ongoing government crackdown on Islamists. He was granted a retrial last month on charges of organising an unauthorised protest, beating a police officer and stealing his walkie-talkie last November. The clampdown on dissent surged in autumn 2013 after the military ousting of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi following demonstrations urging his resignation. Morsi's supporters staged mass rallies and sit-ins in Cairo, which the authorities cleared, leaving thousands dead and tens of thousands jailed. A subsequent anti-protest law made any unauthorised demonstration a criminal offence and has been used to suppress both Islamist and secular activists. Abd El Fattah has been arrested several times including under longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. He comes from one of Egypt's most prominent activist families – his sister Sanaa is also in jail for violating the same law and his father, Ahmed Seif, who died in August, was a human rights activist who was repeatedly jailed under Mubarak |