Date of 1st day in prison: 01/03/2018 Released: Yes Restrictions: None |
Ezzat Ghoneim is a human rights lawyer and director of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, a human rights organisation based in Cairo. He has defended political prisoners both in military and State Security courts.
He was arrested in March 2018 following a BBC report on torture and accused of spreading false news and joining a banned group. Initially interrogated without a lawyer, he was then kept in Tora prison for six months. Expected to be released following a decision of the Giza criminal court on precautionary measures in Supreme State Security case 441/2018, he went missing on 14 September 2018. Egyptian authorities did not provide any indication regarding his whereabouts. On 3 February 2019, he appeared before the Cairo criminal court who sentenced him to 45 days in detention. His pre-trial detention is regularly renewed.
In April 2019, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued a legal opinion on his situation, concluding that his detention contravened several articles in the Universal Declaration of Human rights and that the “appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Ezzat immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law.”
On 28 July 2019, the Egyptian authorities summoned Ezzat Ghoneim and questioned him in another case No. 1118/2019 Supreme State Security over “membership in a banned group, and he was rotated to two further cases under which he was kept in pre-trial detention. On 29 May 2021, the State Security Prosecution investigated Ezzat in case 1552 of 2018, known as the “Egyptian Coordination for Human Rights and Freedoms” case, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 5 March 2023. He was convicted alongside 13 other defendants on bogus charges stemming from their human rights work. UN Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor expressed her concerns over this verdict and called for the defendants’ immediate release.
Mr Ghoneim was deprived of due process, including the right to present a defence and challenge the legality of his detention, and has been deprived of his right to receive visits.
The European Parliament has repeatedly called for Mr Ghoneim’s immediate release in its recent resolutions on Egypt (24 November 2022, 18 December 2020, 24 October 2019).
For the latest developments in Ghoneim’s case check the informal Facebook campaign @freeghoneim.