Egypt court reverses Kamal Abbas' sentence

LabourStart

The same court which earlier this year sentenced in absentia Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of Egypt's Center for Trade Union and Worker's Services (CTUWS) to six months imprisonment for "insulting a public officer" during the 2011 International Labour Conference in Geneva, dismissed the charges and threw out the sentence on November 25.

As the IUF put it, "The absurd sentence was based on an incident at the June 2011 International Labour Conference in Geneva, which Abbas attended as a guest of the International Trade Union Confederation. Abbas interrupted Ismael Fahmy, representing the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation, when he claimed in his speech that the ETUF represented Egyptian workers."

The CTUWS has thanked all those who supported the international defense campaign and has reaffirmed its commitment to the struggle for independent trade unions in Egypt.

The LabourStart campaign demanding that the charges be dropped ended in June with nearly 7,500 messages sent to the Egyptian authorities.

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Eric Lee