The undersigned organizations call on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to quash the verdict against Ahmed Samir Santawy, an Egyptian researcher and anthropology student at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria. On 22 June 2021, an emergency court sentenced him to four years in prison on charges of publishing “false news”. His conviction is based solely on social media posts criticizing human rights violations in Egypt and the state’s mishandling of the pandemic. Since 23 June, Ahmed Samir Santawy has been on hunger strike to protest his unjust conviction; his life is at serious risk.
