Egypt's former anti-graft chief walks free after five-year sentence

Hisham Geneina was convicted in 2018 of spreading false news about the military

Hisham Geneina, Egypty's former anti-graft chief, at his suburban Cairo home. AP

Egypt’s former anti-graft chief Hisham Geneina has walked free from jail after serving a five-year sentence following his conviction of insulting and spreading false news about the military, his family said.

His daughter, Shorouk Geneina, posted photos online of her father smiling while posing for the camera outside his suburban Cairo home on Tuesday. Two more images showed the pair hugging.

“Baba is finally out,” she wrote on Facebook.

A former judge, Mr Geneina was arrested in February 2018 after an interview he gave to a local media outlet in which he alleged that the military's former chief-of-staff, Gen Sami Annan, was in possession of documents incriminating the country’s leadership. He said the documents were kept abroad.

Gen Annan himself was arrested shortly after he announced his intention to challenge President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in the 2018 election won by the Egyptian leader.

He was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraudulently registering to vote, breaching military regulations and incitement against the armed forces.

He was released in December 2019 for health reasons.

Mr Geneina chaired the country’s top financial watchdog until Mr El Sisi fired him in 2016 following an investigation that concluded he misled the public on the scale of government corruption.

At the time, Mr Geneina said corruption had cost the country billions of dollars in 2015 alone. He later said he was misquoted by a local news outlet.

Separately, a prominent Egyptian architect who played a key role in Egypt’s 2011 uprising, returned to Egypt earlier this week after three years of self-imposed exile.

Mamdouh Hamza announced his arrival back in Egypt in a video posted online.

Prominent Egyptian architect and activist Mamdouh Hamza. Philip Cheung / The National

He was arrested in 2019 for spreading false news, but was released a day later on a 20,000-pound bail ($654). Fearing conviction and a prison sentence, he left the country soon after.

Mr Hamza was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison in October 2020 for using social media to incite acts of terrorism and of obstructing justice because of a tweet he posted urging residents of a Nile island in Cairo to resist government plans to evict them from their homes.

In January the judiciary issued a statement saying he had been removed from the country's list of terrorists, which he was added to for disturbing public order, and so there was no travel ban against him.

Shortly after arriving in Cairo, he posted a video saying he had been welcomed at the airport as “one of Egypt's loyal sons” by a senior army general and that he was “optimistic” about the direction of the country.

He is the latest opposition activist to freely return home since Mr El Sisi announced plans in April last year for a national dialogue to chart the country’s political future.

He has also since allowed a measure of freedom of expression after years in which authorities showed little tolerance for dissent. Mr El Sisi said that was necessary while the country faced a wave of terrorism in the early days of his eight-year rule.

Hundreds of critics held in pre-trial detention have also been released since April 2022. The proposed national dialogue, however, remains in its preparatory stages and no date has been announced for its start.