Yesterday, a Cairo Court acquitted 43 defendants in Egypt’s infamous “foreign funding” case (also known as Case 173).
Reacting to this news, EuroMed Rights’ President, Wadih Al-Asmar, explains:
“The Egyptian authorities have heeded the international community’s numerous calls to acquit the defendants in the first phase and the international leg of the “foreign funding” case. Many international rights organisations, as well as US and European authorities – in particular the most recent EP urgency resolution – have denounced the government’s crackdown on civil society organisations in Egypt. We welcome this decision and hope that it is only the very first step in this case, as 37 NGOs are still being prosecuted in the second phase of this case, with over a dozen national human rights workers targeted.
We call upon the international community not to forget those Egyptians human rights defenders who are even more at risk. So much damage has been done to the Egyptian human rights work over the last seven years. It is high time for the foreign funding case to be closed once and for all and all charges to be dropped.”