The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) renewed its call for the release of its client, translator Marwa Arafa, 32, whose first session of criminal trial began on 6 July after more than five years in pre-trial detention.

Arafa is being tried in connection with Case No. 570 of 2020 (Supreme State Security) before the First Terrorism Circuit of the criminal court headed by Judge Mohamed El-Sherbiny. She attended the trial in person. The court rejected EIPR lawyer's request for her release pending trial, ignoring the fact that she has remained in detention for more than double the maximum limit set by the Criminal Procedures Law. The court decided to postpone the trial so that defence lawyers can review the case file for the first time since the indictment of the translator and young mother. The next session of the trial will be held on 18 October, with all defendants remaining in detention.

Arafa is being tried along with 38 other defendants. The trial begins five years after the "crimes" attributed to them, which are "joining and financing a terrorist group", and which have allegedly taken place between 2013 and 2020.

Arafa was arrested on 20 April 2020, when a security force raided her house and took her to an unknown destination. She appeared two weeks later before the State Security Prosecution, which accused her of joining a terrorist group and committing a crime of financing. The prosecution remanded her in custody at the time, without looking into her family's reports about her enforced disappearance for two weeks.

This was the first and last interrogation session held by the State Security Prosecution with Arafa. Her detention continued to be automatically renewed in violation of law without interrogation or questioning, until it was decided to refer her to trial after more than five years in unjustified detention.

Arafa has been facing violations for more than five years. These included the use of illegal violence during her arrest, something which still has impacts on her girl – an infant at the time – who witnessed the arrest of her mother and has been deprived of her over the past five years without being able to communicate with her properly.

Over the past years, Arafa’s daughter had to live with autism spectrum disorder without her mother being able to care for her.

Arafa’s mother had previously submitted two appeals to the National Council for Human Rights and the director of the Community Protection Authority at the Ministry of Interior (formerly known as the Prisons Authority) to improve the conditions of her daughter's detention and enable her to exercise her rights to work and continue her post-graduate study, which are stipulated by law. However, she has not received any response so far.

EIPR stresses the need to release Arafa immediately. It calls on the court to consider her legal status over the past five years, not just the casefile, as an assessment of Arafa’s status will show that acquittal is the only logical conclusion to this investigation and the only verdict she deserves.