EuroMed Rights welcomes the release of a hundred Egyptian prisoners, including Human Rights Defenders Sanaa Seif and Yara Sallam. The activists have been pardoned and released on the occasion of the celebration of the Eid Al-Adha holiday. We hope that more releases will follow.
However, we urge the Egyptian authorities to address the root of the problem and abolish the repressive set of law and practices violating international human rights standards. For a hundred prisoners released, tens of thousands remain in prison, where torture and ill-treatment, as well as deaths in custody, are rife. Hundreds more remain on death row. The Egyptian legislative arsenal includes the ‘Protest Law’, a wide-ranging counter-terrorism legal arsenal, repressive laws regulating associations and foreign funding, as well as a system bringing civilians before military tribunals.