Egyptians free American schoolteacher

CAIRO — An American schoolteacher imprisoned in Egypt for nearly a year without trial has been freed by Egyptian authorities and returned home to the United States, the State Department said Monday.

Reem Desouky, 47, a dual Egyptian-American citizen and single mother from Lancaster, Pa., was arrested on arrival at the Cairo airport with her teenage son in July 2019 and hauled off to Qanatir prison outside the capital. She faced charges of running a Facebook page critical of the Egyptian government. Security officials had confiscated her phone and interrogated her about her political opinions and social medias posts, according to her lawyers. Human rights groups denounced her detention as arbitrary and politically motivated.

International criticism of Egypt’s bleak human rights record intensified further over the weekend, when news broke that Shady Habash, a young Egyptian filmmaker imprisoned for directing a satirical music video about President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, had suddenly died.

At least five other Americans are held on trumped-up charges in Egyptian prisons, according to the Freedom Initiative’s estimate. Separately Desouky’s brother, Nour, was arrested when visiting her last summer and remains in jail, Soltan said. Desouky’s son, Mustafa, refused to leave his incarcerated mother in Egypt and missed school to spend the year waiting for her release.

Also on Monday, Marwa Arafa, 27, an Egyptian translator and mother of a 21-month-old child, appeared before state prosecutors pending an investigation into charges that she belongs to and helps to fund a “terrorist group,” her lawyer Islam Salama wrote on Facebook. Plainclothes security officers took Arafa from her Cairo apartment two weeks ago, said her husband, Tamer Mowafy.