Photographs capture mere fractions of seconds, but a series of them taken by an Egyptian journalist has cost him more than three years of his life.
Mahmoud Abou Zeid, known as Shawkan, has been in Cairo’s Tora Prison for more than 1,100 days. He has been detained without trial since he was arrested while photographing the deadly anti-government protests that roiled Egypt in the summer of 2013.
“My passion is photography, but I am paying the price for my passion with my life. Without it, a part of me is missing,” Abou Zeid wrote in a letter published by the Committee to Protect Journalists in March 2015 to mark his 600th day in detention. “Tora prison is like a cemetery. It is a place where dreams come to die.”
On Tuesday, the committee honored Abou Zeid with an International Press Freedom Award, presented in New York — in absentia.
The group started a social media campaign, asking supporters who attended its annual gala to photograph themselves holding a placard saying #FreeShawkan and post it to Twitter.
Among the journalists who posted selfies at the event was Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Washington Post.
Since Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi took power more than three years ago, he has been criticized for cracking down on the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists recorded the imprisonment of 23 journalists in Egypt last year, second only to China.
Abou Zeid’s mother, Reda Aly, who visits him in prison once a week, said of the award: “I am looking forward to talking to him about it, because I know he will be happy, and he deserves it.”
Abou Zeid, 29, was arrested with two other journalists, one from France and one from the US, on Aug. 14, 2013. He was covering clashes between the military and supporters of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, who had been ousted a month before.
The foreign reporters were quickly freed, but Abou Zeid — who was on assignment for Demotix, a British Web site and photo agency — was charged with weapons possession, illegal assembly, murder and attempted murder.
Mike Giglio, the US journalist who was detained at the same time as Abou Zeid and who works for BuzzFeed, has written that he saw the Egyptian carrying only his camera before his arrest.
A freelancer who made his living on the streets of Cairo, studying the subtleties of light, Abou Zeid has been kept in a small, dark cell with more than a dozen other inmates since his arrest, his family said.
He tested positive for hepatitis C before his arrest and his lawyer says he has been denied treatment.
“He is severely anemic and looks skeletal,” his father, Abdel Shakoor Abou Zeid, said.
Mahmoud Abou Zeid is an Egyptian who grew up in Kuwait, where his parents worked as teachers. He moved back to Cairo in 2009 to study and practice journalism. The timing was fortuitous: Within less than two years, he was at the epicenter of months of upheaval that toppled leaders across the region, including former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
“Photography was always his passion and his hobby,” said Ahmed Abu Seif, a childhood friend who now runs a Facebook campaign called Freedom for Shawkan.
Aly brings him home-cooked food on her weekly visits and sometimes slips into the package a piece of fresh fruit, like a mango, which she said was not allowed.
“I only get to see him for one hour once a week, and there are always officers coming and going,” she said.
Sometimes, the prison guards allow her to slip her son bits of chocolate, she said.
“The boy just loves chocolate,” she said.
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