Shaima Al-Sabbagh
Shaima Al-Sabbagh, a poet and a human rights activist from Alexandria city was a member of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party. On the 24th of January 2015 she participated in a peaceful protest at Talaat Harb Square near Tahrir Square, in remembrance of the martyrs of the 25th of January Revolution. She was carrying crowns of flowers along with her peers, but she was shot dead by the Central Police Forces when they attacked the protest. First lieutenant Yasin Mohamed Hatem shot Shaima Al-Sabbagh in the face. She left behind a husband and a six-year-old child.
Shaima joined the Socialist Popular Alliance Party at the end of 2012. She was appointed Secretary of Mobilization Department at the party in Alexandria, She was also responsible for labor issues. She participated actively in protests against both the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Muslim Brotherhood. Before that, she participated in the 25th of January Revolution since the beginning and was arrested on the 25th of January while pregnant with her only child Bilal. She was later released on the 29th of January 2011.
Shaima grew up in a middle-class family in Upper Egypt in Alexandria, she got married from Osama Al-Sahly, a professor at the Faculty of Specific Education at Alexandria University. She was known for her labor rights activism, and aside from politics, she was a poet, and published a collection of poetry entitled, “On the Back of the Ticket.” After her murder, the publishing house Ibn Roshd reprinted the collection.
The last words Shaima wrote on her Facebook profile were: “This country hurts, it no longer has any warmth… May Allah make its land vast and wider than its sky.”
The central police officer, Hatem Yasin, was on trial in March of 2015 with charges of “beating that led to death.” He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The public prosecutor at the time said that Shaima was killed at the hands of an officer who had used rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. The officer has appealed the verdict and the case remained in the court between 2015 and 2017 when lawyer Farid Al-Dib—the same lawyer of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak—presented an appeal note before the Court of Cassation against the verdict of the police officer accused of the murder of Shaima Al-Sabbagh; the court accepted the appeal.