Sharkaway, a current resident of Cairo, was the head of the publishing house Malameh. 

According to Human Rights Watch, he was first arrested on April 24, 2006 at a demonstration in support of judicial independence in Cairo and was eventually released on May 23, 2006. Sharkawy was subsequently arrested on May 25, 2006; he was leaving a peaceful demonstration in downtown Cairo to commemorate the one-year anniversary of attacks by the police and ruling party supporters against journalists and demonstrators (who had called for a boycott of a constitutional referendum). Sharkawy claims that he was beaten and sodomized with a cardboard tube at the Qasr al-Nil police station before being transferred to the State Security Prosecutor’s office in Heliopolis. Sharkawy was later charged with “chanting slogans against the regime liable to disturb public order and social peace,” “insulting the president,” “insulting and assaulting officials in the course of performing their duties,” “calling for an unlicensed assembly,” and “disrupting traffic” and was held at Tahqiq Tora Prison until a prosecutor ordered his release on July 18, 2006. His case is still open. On April 15, 2008, the police broke through the Malameh publishing house and arrested Sharkawy for the April 6th strike, in response to low wages and rising food costs.