Amani Othman’s son is among 170 people on trial in Egypt over suspected links to Isis. Many observers echo her belief that a government drive against Islamic State is ensnaring innocent people

'Funding Isis? He still gets pocket money from me': doubts over Egypt crackdown

“These are the terrorists,” says Amani Othman, showing a mobile phone video of her two sons playing ping pong while on holiday in Kuwait.

Sitting in a Cairo coffee shop, Othman giggles at the idea her boys could truly be extremists. But both Omar and Ahmed, seen in the video joking around as they hit the ball back and forth, are in an Egyptian prison where they have been awaiting trial for nearly two years. Omar, the eldest, is one of 170 defendants facing a litany of charges connected to ideological and financial support for Islamic State. Her younger son is accused of “belonging to a banned group”.

Their family and lawyers say they are innocent, and claim the same is true of many others on the charge sheet. Omar and his fellow accused had their case – number 247 – transferred to a military court earlier this year, which means the trial will be held in secret and the sentences cannot be appealed.

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Young detainees are often at risk of spending much of their lives languishing in Egypt’s labyrinthine prison system on vague and unclear charges. So many students are on trial in case 247 that families and lawyers are campaigning for them to be allowed to take their exams in prison.

Case 247 shows how the Egyptian authorities are responding to the growing threat of Isis in their country. A sweeping crackdown has targeted thousands of people, often in areas where there has been support for the Muslim Brotherhood group, which was once the ruling party but has since been branded a terrorist group and banned.

Observers argue that the Egyptian authorities’ desire to conflate the Muslim Brotherhood with Isis has created dangerous ambiguities. Since the overthrow of Islamist former president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, Egypt has run a campaign of arrests against both groups. At the same time, the country has positioned itself as a vital regional partner in the fight against Isis, a stance welcomed by the Trump administration.

In summer 2015, Omar, 23, disappeared while on holiday in Kuwait. The Kuwaiti authorities told his family he had been arrested, at the request of the Egyptian authorities, for “an electronic crime”. They assumed this meant posting incendiary messages on Facebook.

Omar was covertly transported back to Egypt where, after several months, his family were able to trace him to Cairo’s Lazoghly prison.

So many people have been jailed on political or spurious charges that the government has had to build 16 new prisons since Morsi’s overthrow. Only China and Turkey jail more journalists than Egypt, which also blocked news websites.

Just before dawn, when we were all sleeping, I woke up to the sound of our apartment door being broken down Sabrine Atta

“It is very likely that in Egypt, as in other countries targeting Isis sympathisers, the wide net cast may have caught people who either had little to do with the charges or were simply expressing radical views – or what the government sees as radical views – online,” says Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow working on extremism at George Washington University.

“The wider the net is cast, the more difficult the process gets, because there would be simply too many people to properly assess. As a result, some fall through the cracks and leave from prison straight to Isis.”

Awad points out that while one known Isis supporter included in case 247 was later released by Egyptian authorities, at least one further defendant listed is dead. Of the 170 on the charge sheet, 123 remain in prisons across Cairo.

The situation has been harrowing for families, as Sabrine Atta – mother of former engineering student Ahmed Ehab el Naggar, another defendant in case 247 – attests.

“Just before dawn, when we were all sleeping, I woke up to the sound of our apartment door being broken down,” recalls Atta. “The apartment filled with police. They searched the rooms, gathered us together and asked everyone’s names. They read Ahmed’s name, then asked him where he studied. When he told them al-Azhar University, they took him.

“I despise the system for doing this to young people – to young men.”

That Egypt is dealing with a real and growing Isis insurgency is beyond doubt. The group claimed responsibility for the bomb that brought down a passenger jet over the Sinai desert in October 2015, as well as a more recent string of attacks on Coptic Christians. In June, shortly after Isis claimed responsibility for an attack that left 30 dead in a convoy travelling in the southern Egyptian town of Minya, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi declared a nationwide state of emergency.

The authorities have expanded their efforts to catch those they say are aligned with Isis. However, the secrecy surrounding the court proceedings makes it almost impossible to scrutinise the evidence that allegedly ties the case 247 defendants to the group.

“From my professional perspective, as a lawyer, 80% of the defendants are innocent,” says Khaled El-Masry, a prominent defence lawyer who represents Omar and many of the others.“I won’t deny it, roughly 20% actually committed crimes.”

On Omar’s arrest warrant, dated 1 October 2015 and seen by the Guardian, the space under “charges” is blank. Omar was later added to case 247, charged with funding and giving ideological support to Isis.

“He still gets his pocket money from me, so I don’t know how he has the money to be funding Isis,” says Othman.

Her son is accused in the case documents of being a “leader”, who provided material support to Isis including money and weapons. Othman, a warm and welcoming woman in a wine-coloured hijab, finds the suggestion laughable.

“We are an average conservative Egyptian family,” she says. “We’re not radical at all – I don’t wear the niqab, and my husband is not religious.”

Families whose sons are being held say the arrests followed a pattern: one young man would be pulled in and pressured to give the names of his friends. His friends, often students at the same university or a longtime social network, would then be arrested shortly afterwards. The result is clusters of arrests in areas associated with support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yet the strategy seems remarkably haphazard. “Last Eid, state security stormed our house at 2am, long after the arrest of our two sons,” says Othman. “The police officer asked me where are your sons. I replied – where are my sons? One you took a year ago and the other last week!”