Government must do more to free Waled Youssef from Egyptian jail

This year has been a bizarre and challenging one. Life as we know it has come to a grinding halt as a result of COVID-19. Events at the start of the year now seem, to some, like long-lost memories.

But for one Australian family, January 2020 will never be forgotten. The Youssef family were spending the school holidays in Egypt when Waled Youssef was questioned and imprisoned for taking a photograph on a sightseeing trip. The months since then have been a horrendous blur for his wife, Fadia, and his two children, who had to return to Sydney without him and cannot return to Egypt because of the COVID-19 travel ban.

Waled Youssef and his family.

Youssef remained in prison while the Egyptian authorities went through his social media accounts and it now seems that prosecutors are holding him for pressing the "like" button on an innocuous Facebook post almost a decade ago (although, as his international lawyers, we are yet to see evidence of this).

For Youssef and his family, this is a grotesque and surreal experience. He is an ordinary family man, who runs a cement rendering business in Sydney. The Egyptian authorities have a long history of misusing the law to target those perceived to be critics of the regime: activists, human rights defenders, journalists. But Youssef's case is even more extreme: there is no basis whatsoever for considering him to be a critic who should be silenced. He has no political affiliations and is not an activist.

Youssef is unlawfully detained in notorious Tora Prison in a squalid cell he shares with 17 others, sleeping on a concrete floor without a mattress. Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian journalist who was detained there alongside Australian journalist Peter Greste, has described Tora as “a hellhole".

Youssef’s baseless detention, without proper access to his lawyers and with no family contact, is a flagrant breach of Egypt’s international obligations and its own domestic law.

Detention for months on end in Tora is distressing at any time. But with COVID-19, Youssef's detention is not only unlawful, but life-threatening. There have been numerous reports of COVID-19 deaths in Tora, including three prisoner deaths in the past fortnight, and the death of a prison officer.

Obtaining reliable statistics on COVID-19 in Egyptian prisons is impossible, as the authorities have imposed what Human Rights Watch has described as “a comprehensive information blackout” on detention sites, which includes banning all prison visits, including legal visits, and threatening media outlets if they undermine the official account of how Egypt is handling the pandemic.

Youssef has received consular support from the Australian Embassy in Cairo, and we and his family are grateful for that assistance. But it has not been enough to bring him home to Australia. Has the Foreign Minister been on the phone to her counterparts in Egypt about Youssef's case and Egypt’s flagrant disregard for the rights of this Australian citizen? The government should be supporting his family and taking every step possible to secure Youssef’s return home.

We know that pressure from governments can work with the Egyptian regime. Greste was only able to be released from Tora and returned home in 2015 after the government made repeated direct requests, including from prime minister Tony Abbott to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and from foreign minister Julie Bishop to her counterpart in Cairo. Last year, our client Hazem Hamouda returned to Brisbane after 15 months in Tora. Again, his release was only secured when there was an international spotlight on his case, and the government intervened.

Since Youssef's ordeal began, other dual nationals have been released from Egyptian prisons after lobbying by their governments. Yasser Ahmed Albaz, a Canadian national, was released in July 2020, one week after Canadian President Justin Trudeau rang Sisi directly. And Americans Reem Desouky and Mohamed Amashah were released after strong and audible support from their government.

Quiet diplomacy has resulted in Waled Youssef languishing in unsafe conditions for the best part of a year. The Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister must act. They must speak out and take urgent steps to get him home.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and Jennifer Robinson are barristers at Doughty Street Chambers.