Egypt’s political prisoners have little hope – and the west must share the blame | Jack Shenker

My friend Karim Medhat Ennarah is among the many victims of a dictatorship reliant on western financial and political support

I can’t remember where I first met Karim Medhat Ennarah, but one thing I’m certain of is that I heard him before I saw him. Karim – a gregarious, argumentative 37-year-old with an abiding passion for ice-cream and a smile so wide it fills the room – is always brimming with ideas about the world. His curiosity brings out the same in others, with the result that noisy, animated debate tends to swarm around him wherever he moves.

I’ve known Karim for well over a decade in many different guises: in his public role as a fearless human rights defender working to protect the dignity of his fellow Egyptian citizens, but also as a shisha companion, football rival and friend. Late last year, when plainclothes security forces plucked him from a Red Sea beach and carried him off to Cairo’s high-security Tora jail complex, he became something new to me: a number. Just one more political prisoner facing an unknowable fate, under a regime that, since 2013, is estimated to have arrested or charged at least 60,000 others.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3vPQVN7