UPDATE: The Street Children group were released September 11, 2016, after spending 150 days in detention. Thank you to all who took action to support them.

Ezzedeen Khaled, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed al-Souri, Mohamed Gabr, and Mohamed Yehia are Egyptian satirists belonging to the Street Children (Arabic: Awlad el-Shawarea) protest group. The five men are being held on suspicion of “insulting state institutions” and “inciting protests” over a series of videos which criticize President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and parody his speeches. On May 7, 2015, police stormed his home and arrested Khaled. The other four were arrested throughout the following week.

In the videos, always filmed with a camera phone on the street, the men remake popular songs and create sarcastic renditions of the president’s speeches calling for greater democracy and transparency. They call for peaceful protest as one method of achieving these goals.

The last video posted by the Street Children before their arrest criticized Sisi’s transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia in return for an aid package. In separate demonstrations against this deal, 300 protesters were arrested, with 51 of them having been sentenced to two years in prison apiece.

The Street Children’s political activism is born out of the Arab Spring and denounces autocratic rule of both Islamists and the military dictatorship. The group has been a voice of this often-silenced group of Egyptians, with their “selfie protests” tackling social and political issues, and always calling for the democracy Egyptians hoped for in the 2011 movement.

A sixth member of the Street Children, Mohammed Zein, remains free. The five men are currently in pre-trial detention. It is not yet known when they can expect to face trial. Ezzedeen Khaled, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed al-Souri, Mohamed Gabr, and Mohamed Yehia are currently being held in a police station in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis.