EuroMed Rights calls on Egypt to close the “foreign funding” case 173/2011 and withdraw all measures of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, including travel bans, asset freeze orders and trumped-up tax investigations.
The EU and its member states should monitor Monday’s hearing, which could have a devastating effect on civil society in Egypt.
On Monday, August 15, a Cairo Criminal Court will review an order to freeze the assets of several prominent Egyptian human rights defenders. This politically-motivated case, known as the “foreign funding case”, where human rights defenders and NGOs are accused of receiving foreign funds, could result in criminal charges for which they incur up to 25 years in prison. A judicial committee has imposed a gag order on the press, prohibiting media outlets from publishing anything on the case other than statements issued by the presiding judges until the investigations are complete.
Prominent Human Rights Defenders that might see their assets frozen after Sunday’s hearing are: Hossam Bahgat, founder and board member of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Gamal Eid, founder of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), as well as his wife and daughter, Bahey el-Din Hassan, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) director, members of his family as well as some of CIHRS’s staff; Mostafa al-Hassan, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and Abdel Hafeez Tayel, director of the Egyptian Center for the Right to Education. Approval of the freeze requests on the assets of these defenders would be a key step toward stopping the funding of the NGOs they are affiliated to.
This case is part of a systematic campaign of harassment of human rights defenders, which has increased since the beginning of the year:
Since February, the Egyptian authorities have repeatedly tried to shut down the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture after the government ordered its closure.
In April, the co-founder of Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedom, Ahmad Abdallah, was arrested from his home by security forces and subjected to ill-treatment. He remains in custody to this day.
In May, lawyer Malek Adly from the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights was arrested and has suffered ill-treatment in Tora Prison, where he has been held since then in solitary confinement. Minority rights expert Mina Thabet from ECRF was also arrested from his home and ill-treated by security officers. He was released in June, but the charges against him have not been dropped. Thabet and Abdullah are being investigated for allegedly violating Egypt’s Counter-Terrorism Law (no. 94 of 2015) and Protest Law (no. 107 of 2013). Mohamed Zaree, Egypt Office Director of CIHRS, was banned from travelling out of the country. Rawda Ahmed, a leading Egyptian lawyer at the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), was summoned for questioning by the investigative judge in the foreign funding case.
In June, an Egyptian court froze the assets of Andalus Institute for Peace and Tolerance Studies and that of its Director, Ahmed Samih, also included in the foreign funding case. The director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, woman human rights defender (WHRD) Mozn Hassan was banned from traveling outside of Egypt; this followed upon a summons for interrogation by an investigative judge in the case.
EuroMed Rights condemns the steps taken by the Egyptian government to close the public space for civil society organisations and the harassment of human rights defenders for their peaceful activities in defence of human rights.
Egypt should also amend Penal Code Article 78, which penalises the receipt of foreign funding without government approval and imposes a sentence of up to life imprisonment, which in practice in Egypt is 25 years, and a 500,000 Egyptian pound fine (50,657 EUR).
For more on individual cases of human rights activists behind bars, please see our campaign “Human Rights Behind Bars in Egypt”, and sign our petition here.