for more than 1,000 days since his arrest, Shawkan has been held in Cairo’s Tora Prison, where his health has deteriorated. For the first two years of his imprisonment, he was not granted a trial. Now, finally, he’s included in a mass trial that involves more than 700 other defendants. While, on paper, that’s an improvement, says Yasmin El-Rifae, the Middle East and North Africa research associate for the Committee to Protect Journalists, it’s “not anything that one can describe as being just.”

Photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid, known as Shawkan, was released from prison in Egypt on March 4, more than five years after he was arrested and more than a year after prosecutors had sought the death penalty in his case. However his release carries conditions: He has to report to a police station every day for the next five years and spend every night in jail.