April 6 Movement another victim of Egypt crackdown
Three leading activists from the April 6 Youth Movement, including founder Ahmed Maher, remain behind bars as Egypt's crackdown widens to include secular activists.
CAIRO — "We have been living in a comic strip," claimed April 6 Movement founder Ahmed Maher in a recent letter smuggled from his prison cell.
He was talking about Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's will-he-won't-he presidential bid, but with Egypt's recent legacy of revolutions contorted in and out of shape, its media's cartoonish re-imaginings of events and a state flexing its muscles, Maher could have been talking about a lot of things. The group he helped found, the April 6 Youth Movement, has been a central character in all this.
On the morning of April 7, Maher and leading activists Mohammed Adel and Ahmed Douma were refused appeal for three-year prison sentences handed down in December for disobeying Egypt's protest law.
Activists have demanded a presidential pardon for the three men, protesting on April 8 outside the Ittihadiya presidential palace and marching on Talaat Harb Square on April 10 to make their point. A larger protest is already planned for April 26. Chants of "The revolutionaries will be there" were heard on Thursday between beeping cars, informing passersby.
