A detained Egyptian army officer, in a video statement released on social networking sites, has issued a plea to the public for his release.

Mohamed Wadie is one of 22 officers detained after joining a demonstration against military rule in Tahrir Square on 8 April of last year. The officers had joined the million-man demonstration – dubbed 'the Friday of Purging' – in which protesters attacked Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

The officers who joined the protests were either arrested shortly afterward or handed themselves over to the military authorities.

Dubbed the '8 April Officers,' the group’s cause has become one of the main gripes revolutionaries have against the former ruling military council. Several groups have since been formed to demand their release.

However, in the new video, officer Wadie claims that 21 of his colleagues have already been released, leaving him languishing in prison alone. Since their release, the officers have been attending a rehabilitation programme.

In the video, Wadie sits on a chair while wearing his army uniform and speaks to the camera in a bare room. It is not yet clear how he managed to smuggle a camera into the prison to tape the 29-minute video.

In the footage, released on social networking sites Wednesday, Wadie talks to the public about his 18-month ordeal.

"I didn't make a video to cause problems, no. I made this video because I have questions that I can't find answers to," says Wadie. "The question is, what is the difference between me and my friends who were released?"

Wadie says he was told that the reason for his continued detention was that former military council head, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, had a personal vendetta against him. Tantawi, however, was retired from his post in August and replaced by General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

"So now, my problem is with who?" Wadie asks in the video.
He goes on to complain that he had repeatedly tried to contact El-Sisi's office and other senior army officials, but to no avail.

Wadie has already been tried in four separate cases, and has been sentenced to a total of five years in prison. One of the accusations was that he and the other officers had "conspired to cause divisions within the armed forces."

"I went to Tahrir Square with my colleagues in hopes of making our country better and our army strong," he says. He then goes on to detail the abuse that, he claims, he and his colleagues were subject to while in prison.

"We were arrested and taken to the intelligence offices, where we were shackled and blindfolded like spies," says Wadie. The group, he adds, were kept in a small, dark, windowless room for a two-month period.

"They were 60 days of humiliation," a bitter Wadie asserts. The men were then referred to a court to hear verdicts, he said, where each was slapped with a ten-year jail sentence.

According to Wadie, sentences were handed down without trials or any lawyers present.

Later, the sentences were suspended, and, after a retrial, commuted to three years. According to Wadie’s video testimony, the men were then referred to a military prison, where they were treated humanely enough until the appointment of new security head Haytham Saad El-Din.

"Once he came, he began mistreating our families whenever they came to visit us," says Wadie.

Furious, several of the jailed officers confronted Saad El-Din in his office, where the conversation became heated, Wadie recalled. "He decided to file a complaint against us, which led to an additional six-month sentence," the former officer says.

According to Wadie, there were 850 other detainees with them in the military prison at the time, many of whom were civilians detained for protesting against military rule.

At some point, the situation in the prison deteriorated and the inmates were so badly treated that a riot erupted inside the prison grounds. The riot turned violent, with army personnel firing shots in the air to threaten the inmates.

Wadie and his colleagues, for their part, attempted to calm the situation. "We got involved because many lives would have been lost; it would have been a massacre," he says.

However, prison officials did not view the situation in the same way, and Wadie and his friends were accused of inciting prisoners to riot. This resulted in the group being sent to three different detention facilities, with six – including Wadie – remaining in the military prison.

Their treatment, he says, became even worse after the incident, which led to the officers staging a strike outside their prison cells.

They were once again referred to military prosecutors for questioning. Once there, Wadie was stunned to hear that a new case was being filed against him.

He was accused of using Twitter to criticise members of the then-ruling military council – a charge that led to yet another one-year jail sentence. He was also transferred to the Ras El-Teen Prison in Alexandria, making it even harder for his family to visit him.

"They do this to humiliate and break you," he said.

He was then put in solitary confinement for 126 days, during which he was put under strict observation.

"I didn’t see the sun once," recalls Wadie. "You would only do this to someone if you wanted them to commit suicide, go insane or have a nervous breakdown."

In July, Wadie was transferred back to Cairo, where he continues to serve out his sentence.

"My army uniform will be an honour to me all my life…my dream is to die a martyr in the land of Fayrouz in Sinai," he says. "And I'll die laughing because I'll know that I fulfilled my lifelong dream."

Wadie’s video has since gone viral on social networking sites. One person who watched the video was 26-year-old Ahmed Abul-Hassan.

Abul-Hassan was one of the '8 April officers' to be detained with Wadie in 2011. He, along with 20 other officers, is currently attending the state's 'rehabilitation' programme.

"The programme aims to reincorporate us into the army so that we may rejoin the armed forces," he says.

Since being released, they have spent their time mainly in Cairo's Maadi Hospital, where they are taking classes. "But we aren't treated like prisoners. We attend the classes, but are free to leave afterward," Abul-Hassan asserts.

The rehabilitation programme is due to end in December. The men's fate after that, however, remains unclear.

"There has been no official decision to suspend our sentence," says Abul-Hassan. "So we're not sure if we'll be freed or if they will transfer us back to prison."

Although Abul-Hassan knows Wadie well, he refused to speculate on how the latter managed to sneak a video camera into his jail cell, or how the men had managed to access Twitter from inside prison.

"I can’t elaborate on these issues," says Abul-Hassan. He insists, however, that Wadie's accounts of the men's mistreatment in prison are accurate.

Now, some 18 months after the incident, Abul-Hassan has had ample time to mull over all that has happened since. While he says the officers had good intentions, their actions in April of last year, he now believes, may not have been the best thing for Egypt.

"I don’t regret going to Tahrir Square that day," he says. "Our intentions were honourable, but our approach was wrong. We could have caused major rifts in the army, which, ultimately, would have hurt the country badly."

Wadie's fate, meanwhile, remains unclear. On Thursday, the military announced it would "reconsider" the case of the 8 April officers, but failed to elaborate further.