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The trial of Egyptian-American Aya Hegazy***, her husband Mohamed Hassanein and six others facing sex trafficking and child abuse charges was postponed to March 23 on Wednesday after a court-appointed technician was unable to turn on a laptop that contained key evidence in the case.
The defendants, who run the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Belady Foundation for Street Children, face a total of seven criminal charges for running an unlicensed organization, inciting street children to join pro-Muslim Brotherhood protests and sexually assaulting minors.
Hegazy’s brother Basel told Mada Masr that when the court-appointed technician failed to turn on a laptop that was confiscated from Belady’s headquarters, the Abdeen Criminal Court summoned a committee from Maspero to attend the next hearing. The committee would be required to present its report on the prosecution’s technical evidence on April 20.
The trial has now been postponed five separate times, with Hegazy and the other female defendants held in pretrial detention for more than 600 days at Cairo’s Qanater Women’s Prison, while the male defendants are in custody at Tora Prison. One defendant is being tried in absentia. The case goes back to May 2014, when police raided the Belady Foundation’s headquarters and arrested everyone on the premise.
Only four hearings have taken place so far. At the first session, the trial was postponed for six months due to the absence of witnesses, while the second hearing was postponed for another six months when the police force tasked with transporting the defendants from their respective prisons to the courtroom showed up late. The court has yet to hear any witnesses, and the prosecution has yet to present any evidence.
Hegazy and Hassanein founded Belady in September 2013 to organize projects and campaigns on sanitation, combatting sexual harassment and caring for street children. Their Facebook page shows the defendants running activities for children, including games, picnics and group activities. The NGO is headquartered on downtown Cairo's infamous Mohamed Mahmoud Street.
Hegazy and her family have vehemently denied the charges leveled against them, and local human rights organizations have exhorted the authorities to drop the case and release the defendants, calling the trial “another example of the continued suppression of volunteer action and the quashing of youth and civil society initiatives.”
Note: Aya Hegazi is a 2009 undergraduate alumna of S-CAR. S-CAR students have created this petition to support her: https://www.change.org/p/free-american-imprisoned-for-helping-homeless-children
*** Note: the surname Hijazi also can appear as Hegazi, Hegazy, or Hejazi in English.
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