Loading ...Arab American teen desperate for help in Egyptian prison
By Hannan Adely
North Jersey.com
Hassan, a U.S. citizen formerly of Pomona, NJ, is now in an adult prison in Egypt and pleading for help from the U.S.
Ahmed Hassan, a 17-year-old U.S. citizen and New Jersey native, spends his days in a dark, crowded Egyptian prison cell, waiting and hoping for help.
Hassan’s family and supporters say the teen, who loves basketball and who planned to attend college in the U.S., was jailed after he questioned police officers who were arresting his uncle on a zoning violation last December. A surveillance video released to The Record shows him being beaten by officers and dragged and tossed into a van.
“The family is desperate. He’s a 17-year-old kid sitting in jail with at least 20 adults. Egyptian prisons are not the best place for a kid to be,” said Praveen Madhiraju, a pro bono lawyer with the organization Pretrial Rights International who is representing Hassan.
The teen has been sentenced to a year in prison.
In late March, he wrote a letter to President Donald Trump, pleading for help.
“Mr. President please ….I am proud to be an American. I beg you to defend my right to be free,” he wrote.
Hassan is one of at least seven U.S. citizens Madhiraju said have been unjustly jailed in Egypt in a widespread and brutal crackdown on dissent under the regime of Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Since taking office in 2014, el-Sissi has targeted protesters, journalists and activists. Human rights groups claim that as many as 60,000 political prisoners languish in Egypt’s jails and are routinely held in deplorable conditions, facing torture, abuse and overcrowding.
Madhiraju and other advocates are calling attention to the plight of the jailed U.S. citizens as Trump ushers in warmer relations with the Egyptian leader. Trump and el-Sissi met at the White House on Monday, where Trump called him “a great friend and ally,” but did not mention reports of human rights violations under el-Sissi’s rule.
Hassan’s father, Mohamed Mustafa, and family members of two other Americans detained in Egypt are imploring Trump and other U.S. officials to demand the release of the jailed Americans.
“Mr. President, we believe in your commitment to represent Americans first and the values America holds dear, especially Freedom,” they wrote in a letter to Trump last week. “We urge you to demand that President Sissi release all unjustly detained prisoners in Egypt, including our American family members.”
The Americans have been imprisoned on a variety of charges, mostly related to protests. They include two New York residents, 23-year-old Ahmed Etwiy, a student, and a 52-year-old paralegal, Mustafa Kassem, who have been jailed for four years.
‘Acting like an American kid’
Hassan was born in the United States and grew up in Pomona, a section of Galloway Township near Atlantic City, where the family still owns a home. While they moved back to Egypt nearly 10 years ago, the family often travels back to New Jersey. Hassan spent last summer working in Atlantic City and was studying for the SAT college entrance test.
In his letter to Trump, Hassan describes how the police knocked on his door about 2 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 1. He was in Zagazig, a city about 50 miles north of Cairo. “My father was not home so I answered the door, and I learned the police were looking for my uncle,” he wrote. “The police told me that my uncle built his house on land zoned for agricultural use. I knew the house was built 10 years ago, so I told them the charges were wrong.”
“Mr. President please ….I am proud to be an American. I beg you to defend my right to be free.”
The uncle was arrested, along with five female relatives. As Hassan’s aunt was being taken away, the teen stepped up to police to protest.
“When authorities came, he was acting like an American kid,” Madhiraju said. “He was saying ‘We have rights, you don’t have proper charges to be arresting my uncle.’”
The video shows him approach police, then getting hit and dragged to the back of a van. He was charged with interfering with police work and convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. All the relatives who were arrested also face a year in prison.
Hassan tried to invoke his rights as an American, telling police he would alert U.S. consular officials, his lawyer said.
In his letter to Trump, Hassan wrote that he told the police “that I am a U.S. citizen and that America would help fight for me.The police told me America would do nothing — they laughed at me.”
He said he wasn’t allowed to speak to a lawyer until the day of his trial. In the letter, the teen talks of how “scary” it is to be in prison and that he has been “mistreated” and laughed at” because he is an American.
Hassan was not engaged in political activity, but advocates say his arrest is part of a system where there is little regard for human rights.
“Definitely the political atmosphere plays a huge role in how they treat citizens and people,” said Mohamed Soltan, a former political prisoner in Egypt who now advocates for detainees there. “If there was some sort of accountability, there would not be these accusations and trials.”
Soltan said he didn’t know details of Hassan’s experience in jail, but he described his own experience in several prisons as harrowing. Raised in Ohio, Soltan was arrested in Cairo in 2013 and jailed for terror and conspiracy charges related to his participation in demonstrations. His term was life.
There were beatings, interrogations and torture, he said. He spoke of sleeping in tiny spaces on his side in cells crowded with 40 to 50 other men. He carried out a hunger strike for 16 of his 21 months in prison until the Obama administration helped secure his release.
“I was just there so I feel great sense of responsibility, a lot of survivor’s guilt,” he said.
Hassan’s father reached out to Soltan after hearing about his campaign to help political prisoners, he said.
Seeking help from U.S. officials
U.S. embassy officials in Egypt told the family they cannot get involved, Madhiraju said. The family hopes Trump will pay attention to their appeal for help.
“The president is required by federal law to intervene in any case when an American is unjustly imprisoned and to demand that person’s release,” Madhiraju said.
The U.S. State Department said it was aware of media reports of U.S. citizens detained in Egypt, but would not comment specifically on Hassan’s case.
“One of the most important tasks of the Department of State and U.S. embassies and consulates abroad is to provide assistance to U.S. citizens who are detained abroad,” said a State Department spokesperson. “When a U.S. citizen is detained overseas, the Department works to provide all appropriate consular assistance.”
Hassan’s lawyer has reached out to elected officials, too, for help.
U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., is aware of Hassan’s detainment and reached out to the State Department for assistance, said his spokesman Jason Galanes. A meeting with Hassan’s lawyers and the congressman’s office has been scheduled, he said.
U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, both of New Jersey, did not respond to requests by The Record for comment.
“Our concern is getting Ahmed pardoned and released, and so the thing we want to know is [whether] the U.S. government is trying to help him,” Madhiraju said.
Soltan believes the U.S. has the power to influence Egypt, noting that the nation is one of the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, receiving about $1.5 billion per year. “I can only imagine what is going to happen after this red carpet treatment and no mention of human rights and no mention of U.S. political prisoners,” he said.
Soltan wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post and has lobbied U.S. officials for the release of Hassan and other Americans. He wants to help them, but also to give them hope.
“I know from experience when you are in such a dark place around liars and torturers, you think that’s your world,” Soltan said. “When you hear that people who don’t know you and never met you, out of their humanity, are advocating for you and giving you a voice, you feel like it balances out the good and evil. That there are good people out there and some sort of justice.”
