Egyptian court releases 461 activists detained for spreading ‘false news’

A court in Egypt on Thursday ordered the release of 461 political activists from detention after they were charged with spreading false news.

A rights lawyer, Mohammed Ramadan, told the media that the activists who included journalists and students had been detained in connection with 19 different cases over the past four years.

“Authorities have freed the majority of them in response to orders issued by the Cairo Criminal Court earlier this week,” he said.

The lawyer added that the charges levelled against the detainees included misusing of social media to publish false news and promoting the agenda of a terrorist group, a reference to the proscribed Muslim Brotherhood.

READ ALSO: Egypt, Eritrea, Cameroon ‘among worst jailers of journalists’ —Report

The release of the detainees came more than a month after rare, small protests erupted in some parts of Egypt against the government of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi.

Al-Sissi has repeatedly warned Egyptians against protests, saying they could lead to chaos.

In 2013, the army, then led by al-Sissi, deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, a senior official in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Thousands of secular and Islamist opposition figures have since been rounded up by the government.

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