Galal El-Behairy was 28 years old when he was sentenced to three years in prison for a book of poetry. That was seven years ago. As we approach his 35th birthday, he is still behind bars.
That is because since completing his three-year sentence, every 45 days, like clockwork, the Egyptian authorities renew his pretrial detention, ostensibly because of new charges being levied against him, but in reality keeping him in prison indefinitely. Including his initial sentence, by the time his birthday rolls around on June 27th, he will have spent around 2,671 days behind bars – 1,539 of those in pretrial detention. Thousands of days missing weddings, and births, and tears, and hugs. His imprisonment and separation from his family has had a devastating impact on his mental health. He has already tried to take his own life and gone on hunger strikes, triggered in one case by missing his sister’s wedding.
Speaking in New York at the 2025 PEN America Literary Gala, where El-Behairy was the recipient of this year’s PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, his father told the assembled audience “he paid the price for his opposition with the best years of his life wasted in prison.”
El-Behairy’s case is one example of a growing trend, both globally and within Egypt, where writers are arrested due to their free expression and then indefinitely held, either in pretrial detention or without any charge at all. According to the 2024 Freedom to Write Index, compiled by the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center, nine of 10 writers jailed by Egypt are held in pretrial detention–up from three in 2023.
Activist and online commentator Sharif Al-Rouby was placed in pretrial detention on September 17th, 2022 – more than 1,000 days ago – and has been held there ever since. Another online commentator, Ahmed Abdel Majeed Oraby, has been in pretrial detention since November 21, 2022 – nearly 950 days ago. Satirical cartoonist Ashraf Omar was arrested in July 2024 and since then, his detention has been repeatedly extended, with his team saying no evidence or investigations have been presented to them by the prosecution. In January 2025, Omar’s wife Nada Mougheeth was also arrested and disappeared one month after an interview with a podcast detailing her husband’s arrest. The interviewer on the podcast, Ahmed Serag, was also detained. The arrest of Nada brings into stark reality the devastating impact Egypt’s treatment of writers is having, not just on the people being held in prison without end, but also on their families and supporters.
There is no example of this impact on families more heartbreaking than that of Laila Soueif, who was recently hospitalised as a result of her more than 250-day hunger strike protesting the continued detention of her son, British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. After his arrest in 2019, Abd El-Fattah was held in pretrial detention for nearly two years before he was sentenced to five years in prison for sharing a social media post about torture. The unjust sentence was made worse by the fact that his time in pretrial detention was not counted towards his sentence.
In El-Behairy’s case, the poet had a semblance of a trial initially. In March 2018, five days after the release of the protest song Balaha which he had collaborated on, the Egyptian poet, lyricist, and activist was arrested and forcibly disappeared for a week. He later reappeared in a military court, despite being a civilian, showing signs of torture. The initial charges against him were dropped, but he was kept in detention until July 2018 – four months after his initial arrest – when he was charged and sentenced to three years in prison for “spreading false news and rumors” and “insulting the Egyptian army” in his book of poetry, The Finest Women on Earth. At the end of the sentence in 2021, the ordeal of his indefinite detention on new charges began.
For both El-Behairy and Abd El-Fattah, unjust sentences were combined with pretrial detention to extend their time behind bars indefinitely. That is why the PEN America is calling on the Egyptian government to immediately and unconditionally release El-Behairy, Abd El-Fattah and all writers jailed for their words. We also call on the Egyptian government to ensure that while writers are in detention, they are held in humane conditions and have access to their families, lawyers, and health care.
The Egyptian government’s treatment of its writers and crackdown on free speech is causing untold suffering to writers and their families, and it is also denying the world access to their creative expression, often used beautifully for peaceful protest and for the pursuit of truth.
As for El-Behairy, he writes: “My voice betrays me and breaks inside. In my silence is my death. My dear country, how can I sing to you? If I saw my death for ONE song.”
