Date of 1st day in prison: 10/09/2017 Released: No Restrictions: None |
Ibrahim Metwally Hegazy is a human rights lawyer and the co-founder and coordinator of the Association of the Families of the Enforced Disappeared (AFED). Metwally represented families of people forcibly removed by the Egyptian state and provided legal advice to the family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian Cambridge university student who disappeared on 25 January 2016 and whose body was found bearing signs of extreme torture.
Mr Metwally was arrested on 10 September 2017 at Cairo International airport while travelling to Geneva to attend a session of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance (WGEID) to which he was invited in his capacity as the founder of the AFED and as the father of a forcibly disappeared son since July 2013, who remains missing to this day. He is suspected of founding and leading an organisation that was illegally established.
His pre-trial detention is systematically renewed every 45 days and he has been subjected to recycling of three cases with the same charges, a technique used to keep prisoners of conscience detained without trial. In November 2023, the Cairo Criminal Court renewed again his detention pending case 786 of 2020. He has been prevented from exercising and denied visitation rights for extended periods of time and held in solitary confinement.
On 14 October 2019, the Supreme State Security Prosecution found him innocent and decided to release him, however his release order was not implemented and on 5 November 2019 he was accused in a new case (1470/2019) on charges of joining a terrorist group and funding terrorism.
On 26 August 2020, he received a release order with precautionary measures in state security case 1470/2019, yet the release order was not implemented. On 6 September 2020, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) reported that he was accused and investigated in a new case (786/2020) by the supreme state security prosecution on the charge of “taking command of a group” which was formed during his transfers to and from the prosecution for detention renewals.
On 27 November 2020, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) granted its 2020 Human Rights Award to Ibrahim Metwally Hegazy and another six Egyptian lawyers for their role in defending human rights.
In October 2021, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights warned that his health is seriously deteriorating: he has been suffering from prostate hyperplasia and has been denied access to medication. He requires urgent surgery to avoid serious complications that could be life-threatening and to relax the extreme pain he suffers from in his solitary cell.
The European Parliament has repeatedly called for Mr Hegazy’s immediate release in its recent resolutions on the human rights situation in Egypt (24 November 2022, 18 December 2020, 24 October 2019). UN experts have also called for his immediate release on multiple occasions (2019, 2020).