Egypt: Government again lashes out at "children of the revolution"

27 October 2014. A World to Win News Service. Activists who demonstrated against a law banning protests last June have themselves been sentenced to prison for breaking that law. The three-year terms, to be followed by fines and three years of police surveillance, shocked even other activists, which might have been the intended message. One of the 23 people sent to prison was a legal observer, not a participant in the June demonstration that targeted the continuing trial of another set of activists arrested last year for demonstrating against the same law. One of those now convicted, Sanaa Seif, 20, is the sister of the well-known blogger Alaa Abdel-Fattah whose name is widely associated with those who call themselves "the youth of the revolution", the toppling of the U.S.-supported Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The day after this verdict, on 27 October Abel-Fattah, who along with Seif was released to attend their father's funeral, was again taken into custody and sent back to prison, rejoining two dozen other co-defendants to await their trial, scheduled to resume in mid-November. This current trial is a retrial, after appealing an earlier judicial process in which they were sentenced to 15 years in prison. That same day, a law was issued stipulating that schoolchildren and university students can be tried by military courts if they are accused of "sabotaging public facilities" (for instance, by holding a protest in or near a school) or impeding traffic (the Tahrir Square revolt that led to Mubarak's downfall blocked one of the capital's main thoroughfares).