Blogger Abdel Rahman Tarek, known as “Mocha,” ended on Wednesday a 53-day hunger strike in protest of his prolonged remand detention, his lawyer and sister told Mada Masr on Thursday. 

After serving out a prison sentence for a 2013 case, Tarek was completing the terms of his probation when he was arrested anew in 2019. Since then, two consecutive orders for his release have been preempted by his addition to new cases, allowing authorities to continue to hold him and effectively pushing back the two-year legal limit on remand detention.

After he was added to the newest case in December, Tarek began his hunger strike at Cairo’s Abdeen Police Station. 

Tarek ended his hunger strike on Wednesday, however, due to his deteriorating health and pressure from prison authorities, his lawyer, Mohamed Fathy, and sister Sara Tarek told Mada Masr. 

“He got very sick because of the hunger strike and was hospitalized in prison several times,” she told Mada Masr.

Prison authorities have denied Tarek legal and family visitation rights since December, according to his lawyer and sister, who told Mada Masr that they learned two weeks ago that he had been transferred from Abdeen Police Station to Tora Prison through the relatives of other prisoners. 

Over the last two months, Tarek’s remand detention renewal sessions have also been conducted without his attendance, Fathy told Mada Masr, adding that authorities have justified his absence from court by pointing to protective measures implemented in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a practice that was widely used during the initial months of the outbreak in Egypt in the spring of 2020. 

Sara also was not officially informed by prison authorities that her brother had ended his hunger strike yesterday, receiving the news from the relative of another person being held at Tora Prison. 

Tarek’s lawyer told Mada Masr that he filed a complaint with the State Security Prosecution earlier this week against the Tora Prison commissioner for endangering Tarek’s life and refusing to document his hunger strike.

Tarek was sentenced in 2015 in relation to the Shura Council case, which dates back to November 26, 2013, when a number of activists organized a protest against military trials for civilians in front of the legislative building. The Constituent Assembly tasked with writing the Constitution — which included articles sanctioning military trials — was meeting in the building at the time. Police violently dispersed the march and arrested some of the demonstrators. 

Despite the fact that several defendants in this case received presidential pardons, Tarek served out the entirety of his three-year prison sentence until 2019, and was handed a three-year probationary period, in which he had to spend 12 hours each day at the Qasr al-Nil Police Station.