The Open Society Justice Initiative and Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights have announced a development in their complaint on behalf of Egyptian political prisoner Mohammed Abderrahim El-Sharkawi. [OSJI] The two organizations recently filed written arguments on admissibility before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which received the complaint in late 2010. [OSJI] El-Sharkawi reportedly spent nearly 16 years in detention without being charged or tried for any crime, before being released in March of this year when the ruling military council released hundreds of political prisoners following former president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. [OSJI] The fact of El-Sharkawi’s release does not moot his claim for the alleged arbitrary detention and mistreatment he suffered for over a decade, and his representatives have urged the African Commission to hold Egypt accountable, in part to deter future abuses of a similar nature.