The Bulaq Criminal Court handed novelist Ahmed Nagy a two-year prison sentence Saturday.

The court accepted the appeal presented by the general prosecution on the acquittal of Nagy in November of charges of publishing and writing an article with “obscene sexual content”.

The court sentenced him two years in prison and ordered the editor of Akhbar Al-Adab to pay EGP 10,000 as a fine for publishing Nagy’s article, according to the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).

A chapter of Nagy’s novel “The Use of Life” was published in Akhbar Al-Adab, a literary journal that falls under state-owned Akhbar Al-Youm, after it had already been published by Dar El-Tanweer publishing house.

After Nagy was referred to court last November, several NGOs criticised the ambiguity of legal terms such as “violating the sanctity of public morals” and questioned what constitutes “public morals”.

In several statements and a conference, journalists, intellectuals, and public figures called for solidarity with Nagy and other writers and scholars who had been legally prosecuted due to the content of their work.