Dozens of members from the international human rights network Amnesty International protested in New Zealand on Monday, in solidarity with an Egyptian minor who is being held in detention for wearing a T-shirt with anti-torture slogans on it.
Mahmoud Hussein, a second-year high school student, and his friend, Islam Talaat, have been in custody since January 2014, when they were arrested for wearing a T-Shirt bearing the slogan “Nation Without Torture”.
They were apprehended while marking the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled former autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
“Everyone should be able to live without fear of the views they express or for participating peacefully in a protest. But Mahmoud Hussein has spent 20 months in jail without charge or trial for doing just that with his only offence being to have demanded an end to torture,” Amnesty said in a report in June.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
