Egypt human rights lawyer released after being detained for defying president News
Egypt human rights lawyer released after being detained for defying president

Egyptian human rights lawyer Malek Adly was released from prison Sunday following a Saturday decision by an Egyptian court. Adly had been held in solitary confinement [AP report] for more than 100 days without a formal charge, and his incarceration was pinned on various administrative detention orders. Adly supporters claim that the lawyer’s prosecution was due to an interview [BBC backgrounder] in which he criticized an April decision by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi [BBC profile] to hand over two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.

Last year Egypt and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement [JURIST report] to improve stability and safety in the region, and Egypt gifted the two islands to Saudi Arabia as a symbol of good will. The agreement, entitled the “Cairo Declaration” and signed in Cairo by el-Sisi and Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to boost military and social ties in the region, as well as improve economic stability. However, in June a court in Cairo invalidated [JURIST report] the Egyptian president’s decision to give sovereignty over the two islands to Saudi Arabia. The relationship between the two countries has been improving since the ouster Islamist Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Saudi Arabia has in turn offered billions of dollars to aid Egypt in its joint bombing campaign with the Saudis against Yemen. The pact also sets out plans to build a new joint Arab military force to combat regional terrorism.

THIS DAY @ LAW

White supremacists overthrow government in Wilmington, North Carolina

A group of white supremacists overthrew the government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, killing at least dozens of Black people in the process. The city's Republican government resigned after the 500-2,000 strong white mob burned the offices of a Black-owned newspaper and terrorized black neighborhoods. The new state Democratic government passed laws in 1899 disenfranchising Black voters across North Carolina. Learn more about the 1898 Wilmington Coup.

Supreme Court limited free speech in wartime

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case, resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about."

Leonid Brezhnev dies

On November 10, 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died of a heart attack. He had served as leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death. Following his death, the Soviet Union cycled through three more leaders during the 1980s until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the country to dissolve in 1991. Read an obituary of Leonid Brezhnev from the New York Times.