people arrested randomly from the street) and is taken from inside the police station where he was already detained every night. Everyone arrested is charged with ‘belonging to a terrorist organization’ and ‘spreading false news’, and none are sent to trial but are kept instead in a state of ‘preventive detention pending trial’, that can be renewed without trial. Legally, this is subject to a two-year limit. We will cross that threshold as this book goes to print, though we expect that, as with the majority of political prisoners in Egypt today, Alaa’s imprisonment will, one way or another,
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