Date of release: 28/08/2016 Restrictions: Travel Ban |
Malek Adly is a prominent human rights lawyer and the director of Lawyers Network at the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), which seeks to promote and mobilise social movements to spread the culture of human rights.
He is one the founders of the Front for Defending Egypt’s Protesters, a group comprising of 34 human rights organisations and several lawyers, which documents illegal practices carried out by state police forces against peaceful protesters.
Upon his arrest in Cairo’s Maadi district on 5 May 2016, Malek Adly was charged with attempting to overthrow the regime, accused of “inciting protests” rejecting the deal between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over two Red Sea islands. He was transferred to Tora prison, where he was reportedly mistreated and beaten in detention, and denied family and lawyer visitation rights.
On 28 August 2016, he was released from prison after having spent nearly 4 months in pre-trial detention in solitary confinement. The charges against him were only dropped in August 2018.
Additionally, in August 2017, Malek Adly was summoned for interrogation by the investigative judge in case 173/2011, known as the Foreign Funding case, accused of conducting activities with the purpose of “harming national security” as an employee at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center in 2010. He is subject to a travel ban and close monitoring.