The Free Movement, an alliance of liberal opposition parties in Egypt, announced on Sunday that it would not nominate a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for next spring, after its Secretary-General, Hisham Qassem, was sentenced to six months in prison.

On Saturday, the Egyptian Economic Court issued a six-month prison sentence against publisher Hisham Qassem, Secretary-General of the opposition Free Movement, which effectively prevents him from participating in the electoral campaign for the upcoming presidential elections.

His lawyer, Nasser Amin, said that the rulings have been appealed and a hearing has been set for October 7.

The Free Movement said in a statement on Sunday that Qasim (64 years old) “was a potential presidential candidate if basic electoral guarantees were available.”

He announced, "temporarily suspending all his political participation, and not running a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections," pointing out that "the political atmosphere will not allow for freedom, integrity, and fairness of elections, without which the current regime becomes the competitor and arbiter, and the results become decided in advance."

On the eve of Qasim’s sentencing, the only opposition figure who announced his intention to run in the presidential elections, Ahmed Al-Tantawi, revealed that his phone had been under surveillance since September 2021, after the Citizen Lab Center at the University of Toronto revealed that an electronic spying system had been designated to monitor his phone.

Al-Tantawi affirmed his "determination" to continue his campaign despite the doubling of "the rate and seriousness of the illegal and immoral actions carried out by the security services against his campaign."

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi intends to nominate himself again, although he has not officially announced this yet.

Al-Sisi has been in power for about ten years after the army ousted the late Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

Egypt includes thousands of political prisoners and ranks 134 out of 140 on a list drawn up by the World Justice Project Center to classify countries according to their respect for the rules of the rule of law.