Since August 16, Canadian filmmaker John Greyson and physician Tarek Loubani have been held in an Egyptian prison without charges. The pair were planning to make a film about conditions in a Gaza hospital when they stepped into a Cairo police station to ask for directions. They were arrested instead.
The two now share a cell with 38 other inmates. The cell only has one sink and one toilet.
Although no charges have been formally pressed, the two are suspected of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to blow up the police station. Their first courtroom hearing was postponed when the prosecutor failed to show up.
Yesterday, a press conference was held at the Toronto Film Festival calling for their immediate release. Among those who spoke out on the issue were Canadian filmmakers Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley, documentarian Alex Gibney, novelist Michael Ondaatje, and Greyson’s sister Cecilia Greyson.
“Both Tarek and John are people who have built their communities and have given so much of their time—who have done so many things for reasons other than money,”; Sarah Polley told ET Canada. “It doesn’t surprise me that they are this loved. I’m thrilled to see how this has reverberated. We’re getting phone calls from big Hollywood stars asking “How can we help?’ It’s amazing to see that this is beyond the Toronto Film Festival. People are talking about this all over the world and will continue to do so until their released.”;
A petition to free the pair has collected 112, 166 signatures so far, including those of Ben Affleck, Noam Chomsky, Alice Munro, Lena Dunham, Charlize Theron, and Alec Baldwin.
For more information on the case, visit TarekAndJohn.com.
