EuroMed Rights strongly condemns the arrest yesterday of Egyptian lawyer, head of the board of trustees of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Aid (CEWLA) and prominent women’s rights advocate Azza Soliman. After a few hours of interrogation, she has been released on bail.
Azza Soliman was arrested from her home yesterday afternoon and escorted to the police station by Egyptian security forces. She was later transferred to the New Cairo court where she was interrogated by the investigative judge of case no 173, known as the foreign funding case. Released on bail in the evening, she is nevertheless currently under investigation with the investigative judge and she faces the following charges: receiving foreign funding to harm state interest, establishment of an entity that conducts activities similar to that of associations’ activities and tax evasion.
Azza Soliman has already been harassed over the last weeks: she was subjected to a travel ban last month when she was on her way to Jordan, she was later informed that her personal bank account and that of her law firm LJP (Lawyers for Justice and Peace) were frozen by instruction of the Central Bank in relation to the foreign funding case.
EuroMed Rights strongly denounces the harassment faced by Azza Soliman and other Egyptian Human Rights Defenders. We call on the international community to raise this case urgently with Egyptian authorities. Egypt’s government should end the crackdown on independent civil society and human rights advocates in Egypt.
#HarassNoMore #HumanRights activists
