On November 11, 2019, while Asmaa*—a human rights lawyer returning from a legal training in New York—stood at Frankfurt Airport waiting for her flight to Cairo, she opened her phone to find a flood of messages from family and friends urging her not to return to Egypt: “Security forces visited your house… your name has been added to a case.”
Asmaa had left Egypt in early October of the same year for what seemed like a routine trip, planning to return soon after her training ended. But those warning messages turned her life upside down. She had no clear destination and only carried her travel bag and a transit passport, while the homeland suddenly appeared to have closed its doors.
From that day, and for two years, Asmaa spent her days on a couch in a rented apartment in Tunisia, trying to come to terms with the reality of forced exile and recalling the moment she transformed from a lawyer defending political detainees since 2013 to a wanted figure banned from returning without investigation or trial.
Asmaa was not surprised by the sudden shift from defender to accused—“I expected it since 2013,” she told Zawia3. What was harder to grasp, however, was the abrupt transition from standing at the aircraft gate ready to return to Egypt, to searching in the same airport for a country that might accept her. For five straight hours, friends tried to convince her not to go back, while she sought something simpler: “I just wanted to see someone I knew, someone who could reassure me.”
She chose Tunisia—where she had work friends and the possibility of bringing her mother later. But the obstacles remained severe: entry for Egyptians required a visa issued by the Tunisian embassy in Cairo, making Tunisia nearly impossible at the time. After another six hours of effort, her friends managed to secure her a visa upon arrival and booked her a seat on a Lufthansa flight leaving in ninety minutes.
Still, the hurdles weren’t over. Asmaa spent over an hour trying to convince the airline staff to issue her a boarding pass, facing repeated refusals on the grounds that she didn’t have an official visa. “They discriminated against me in every possible way,” she said. “I completely broke down, and there were only 30 minutes left before the plane departed. I found myself threatening to seek asylum in Germany if they didn’t let me board.”
That threat marked a turning point. The moment she uttered the word “asylum,” a Tunisian employee approached her, spoke to her in Arabic, and apologized for the delay. After 12 hours of waiting and psychological stress, Asmaa finally left Frankfurt Airport for Tunisia, leaving behind years of human rights work in Egypt to start from scratch in a country she had never known.
By leaving Egypt, Asmaa joined what could be called the “Exiled Lawyers”—a group of Egyptian human rights attorneys who were forced to flee the country after being transformed from defenders of detainees into individuals wanted in security-related cases. Asmaa estimates their number to be around “25 human rights lawyers currently living outside Egypt,” describing this figure as “very high; we used to be around 60 to 70 lawyers meeting daily in courtrooms. Now 25 of us are in exile—about 40% of the country’s human rights lawyers.”
She adds that this number excludes those who were unable to leave: “Many were arrested before even knowing they were accused, and others chose to withdraw from political work after receiving direct security threats hinting they would be named in investigative reports.”
Some lawyers faced crackdowns so severe that they were arrested and listed as co-defendants alongside their clients in the very cases they were handling. This was the case with human rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer, who was arrested in 2019 while attending a State Security Prosecution session to represent his client, programmer Alaa Abdel Fattah.
El-Baqer was charged in the same case as Abdel Fattah and sentenced in December 2021 to four years in prison. Though he was released under a presidential pardon in 2023, he remains on Egypt’s terrorism list and is banned from travel, according to a joint human rights report submitted by 12 organizations to the United Nations ahead of Egypt’s Universal Periodic Review on January 28.
There are no precise statistics on the number of detained lawyers. In 2017, lawyer Ezzat Ghoneim, director of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, estimated the number of imprisoned or convicted lawyers to be 134—before he himself was arrested in 2018 and sentenced in 2023 to 15 years in a trial widely criticized by rights groups.
Meanwhile, the “Free Them” campaign—launched to advocate for imprisoned lawyers since 2013—estimated in its founding conference in 2015 that around 300 lawyers had been arrested since that year.
2019: The Onset of the Crackdown
Ali*, a human rights lawyer who fled Egypt in mid-2023 with nothing but a backpack after learning his name was listed in a case, reflects on the broader context of targeting rights defenders, including lawyers. After moving from Lebanon to Oman, he eventually settled in Tunisia.
“We were just another phase in the authorities’ campaign against anyone who posed a nuisance,” he said. “It started with the targeting of Islamists and their lawyers after 2013, then shifted to political activists and parties, then to the general public—anyone who dared to write a word of criticism. Finally, it reached human rights lawyers, the last link in the system.” He adds, “Among ourselves, we used to joke and ask: When will our turn come?”
It seems the turn did come in 2019, according to both Ali* and Asmaa*. The latter traces the beginning of the crackdown to the lawyers’ efforts in the aftermath of the mass arrests during the September 20, 2019 protests. “Lawyers fought battles at the Supreme State Security Prosecution to represent the detainees, help them contact their families, and deliver their basic needs,” she said. “Within ten days, we represented over 2,000 defendants—not counting those who were released. We witnessed beatings and torture. The lawyer was on the front line—defending, documenting, and publishing. I had nightmares from what we saw in the prosecution offices.”
Asmaa* points out that the crackdown began with “the arrest of Mahienour El-Massry and Mohamed El-Baqer from inside the prosecution building, then Amr Imam. Within less than two weeks, five separate cases had been opened against lawyers. Then came the arrest of Islam Salama, and my name was added to a case that included other rights defenders.”
She confirms that the crackdown led to an exodus of lawyers: “And those who were abroad didn’t return. Since 2019, around 15 lawyers have been forced into exile.”
Ali* dates the escalation to a noticeable shift in how detained lawyers were treated. “Before 2019, the maximum detention period for a lawyer was about six months—perhaps slightly longer if they were affiliated with a political group,” he noted. “But after 2019, those who entered never came out. Even when pretrial detention limits were exceeded, the cases became black holes.”
Since 2017, civil society lawyers have been regularly summoned to the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) in New Cairo. Ali* recalls that prior to that year, “We were appearing before different prosecution offices and courts daily, until 2017 when it was decided to centralize all political cases at the SSSP, regardless of the severity of the case or the defendant’s profile.” He explains, “Previously, the SSSP handled only major terrorism cases,” noting that the shift meant it was now responsible for “anyone who posted a comment on Facebook.”
He attributes this shift to “a desire by the National Security Agency to monitor all political cases,” adding, “Before 2017, it was difficult for them to coordinate with all judges and courts. Sometimes, release orders were issued by prosecutors who didn’t align with their preferences.”
“To streamline coordination and tighten control, they opted for centralization—so that all political cases would be handled by one trusted office in constant contact with them: the Supreme State Security Prosecution,” he said.
According to Amnesty International’s November 2019 report “Permanent State of Exception: Violations by the Supreme State Security Prosecution,” the number of cases referred to the SSSP had tripled by 2018 compared to 2013. In 2013, 529 cases were referred; that number soared to 1,739 in 2018.
This shift didn’t just harm the defendants; it also impacted the lawyers. “Restricting our legal work to the SSSP made it easier for National Security to profile us, monitor us closely, and increase the harassment,” Ali* explains.
Labeling and Stripping
We spoke with five lawyers who had regular encounters with the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), including one still working inside Egypt. All agreed that merely entering the premises is “an exhausting task.”
Mohamed*, a lawyer who left Egypt a year and a half ago after being listed in a case, described the layout: “The prosecution building consists of four floors above the ground level, connected to the New Cairo Court via several doors, though only a single small gate is open, guarded by a uniformed police officer.”
The first stop, Mohamed explains, is “a small room where a police officer sits behind a desk, recording every person entering or leaving.” The officer requests the lawyers’ identification cards, records their bar registration numbers, and asks the purpose of their visit. Beside him sits a National Security officer whose job is “to prevent lawyers from accessing the prosecutors’ offices, to receive transfer orders from National Security units nationwide, and to block communication between lawyers and defendants.”
Lawyers gather in a ground-floor room. “Anyone wishing to go upstairs must first inform the officer, who checks the purpose of the visit and asks the official upstairs for approval.” Not everyone gets through. “These restrictions apply to those allowed in; many lawyers are denied entry outright,” Mohamed says.
Those who do get in must surrender their mobile phones and even blank sheets of paper. “Only a single pen is allowed—to avoid the risk of handing one to a defendant.”
Farouk*, a human rights lawyer who left Egypt for the United States over five years ago, links the origins of these invasive entry procedures to a 2015 assassination attempt on Chief Prosecutor Tamer El-Fergany. Two individuals pretending to be lawyers planted an explosive under his car. “They used this incident as a pretext to tighten entry controls on lawyers. When we protested, the answer was simple: no entry for objectors.”
He explains how entering the SSSP without a phone is a form of pressure: “You’re cut off from the outside world. If anything happens to you inside, no one will know.” This led many lawyers to “impose restrictions on themselves out of fear.”
Ali* adds that interrogation sessions often stretch for hours. “When you attend an interrogation, you’re not allowed to leave until it ends. Sometimes I’d arrive at noon and leave at dawn, all that time without a phone or any contact with the outside world.”
Attending Interrogations
For Mohamed, Ali*, and Farouk*, regular visits to the SSSP and complying with the unspoken rules eventually helped them bypass the entry hurdle. “After six months of daily visits, the National Security officer began to recognize me,” Mohamed says.
“I’ve been coming here since 2017, working with a human rights organization providing legal support and documenting violations. The organization protected us by reporting on hearings without revealing our identities, so at first, National Security didn’t categorize me as a ‘rights organization lawyer’,” he adds.
“Working at the SSSP is unlike any other prosecution office. Senior colleagues advised me early on to avoid attending interrogations and stick to remand hearings to protect myself.”
Mohamed ignored that advice. “Whenever I knew of an upcoming interrogation, I’d submit my bar ID card as a formal request to attend.” The response? A flat refusal. “They would say: ‘We’ll call you when we need you.’”
Though this is legally unjustified, he avoided confrontation. “The defendant wasn’t my official client, and they could pressure him to reject my presence.”
Mohamed kept trying, but the rejections continued. “In my first six months, I only attended two or three interrogations.”
This wasn’t the only restriction. The entire design of the SSSP experience seemed geared toward preventing lawyers from seeing new detainees. “It’s impossible for remand hearings and interrogations to happen simultaneously,” he says. “After the hearings end, a National Security officer would tell us to leave, claiming the day’s work is done.” Ali* adds, “Interrogations happen in secret,” and to work around this, “lawyers would quietly tip each other off if they saw a colleague’s client listed.”
This had to be done subtly to avoid provoking the officers. Ali* recalls an incident where a colleague at the gate said he was going to attend an interrogation with a client and mentioned that Ali* had informed him of it. “I was banned from the SSSP for ten days, and my colleagues had to negotiate with the National Security officer to lift the ban, which he saw as a breach of red lines.”
That said, lawyers aren’t entirely prohibited from attending interrogations. Mohamed explains: “They still need a lawyer present to legitimize the interrogation, but it has to be someone known to them.” For this reason, both Mohamed and Ali* were later allowed to attend more regularly—so long as they didn’t publish anything or speak to the media. Ali* adds, “Sometimes I was allowed in only if I promised not to inform even the defendant’s family.”
Asmaa*, however, faced a different type of restriction due to being a woman. “There are no female prosecutors at the SSSP, and I was one of the few female lawyers who visited regularly. The harassment focused on my gender,” she recounts. “I was subjected to demeaning body searches where an officer would pat my pockets and then apologize. A prosecutor once asked me to leave during a session under the pretext of examining the defendant’s body, saying it was inappropriate for me to witness it. Other times, clerks would tell me to go home because it was too late.”
Threats
Lawyers react differently to the unspoken red lines. Some, like Asmaa*, defy them by sharing information on social media. Others, like Mohamed, are more cautious. Then there are those, like the unnamed third lawyer described by Ali*, who avoid any media presence and even keep their address secret from colleagues.
Yet all three met the same fate: being listed in a case and forced into exile. Before reaching that point, they endured various threats, according to Mohamed, Ali*, and Farouk*.
Farouk* recalls, “Once, they restricted lawyers from accessing a particular floor. I tried to go up anyway. An employee followed me, took a photo, and said, ‘This is your third strike.’” He stopped going for two weeks after that, just to be safe.
Another staffer approached Mohamed with a message: “You should cut back on attending interrogations; you’re being noticed because of the types of cases you’re involved in.”
Asmaa* says, “Just being present at the SSSP means you face daily intimidation.” She explains, “Whenever a new case opened, the National Security officer would tell me my name was listed. It was clearly a tactic to intimidate me.”
Ali* recounts a 2021 airport incident: “A National Security officer interrogated me, and I thought I wouldn’t get out. I deleted everything from my phone and mentally prepared for prison. After six hours, he came back and let me go.” That was when he realized, “The walls are closing in. It’s time to leave.”
Exile: A Costly Survival
When Asmaa* looks back, she cannot help but reflect on what was lost. Though she escaped imprisonment and went on to build a family, giving birth to two daughters, none of that erases the sorrow of her departure. “I left at the peak of my career,” she says. “I was in love with my legal work, gave it everything, and was about to open my own office. All of that vanished.”
Since leaving Egypt, Asmaa has worked as a human rights researcher and currently heads the legal unit of an organization. But her heart remains tied to the courtroom. “Fieldwork is different. I like to be on the frontlines. I still see myself as a lawyer—this research is just theoretical lawyering to me.”
She is grateful for the twist of fate that saved her, yet exile came with its own challenges. “Tunisia is tough for foreigners—bureaucratic residency procedures and limited job opportunities that require fluency in French,” she explains. This is compounded by the growing crackdown on civil society since President Kais Saied’s July 25, 2021 power grab, which dismantled the parliament and led to the persecution of various opposition figures.
As a result, Asmaa stuck with the organization she had worked with prior to exile, expanding her role to include research, review, and coordination. “I had no choice—I needed a salary to cover my expenses,” she says. “Finances are a serious challenge for exiled lawyers. Salaries from Egyptian NGOs barely cover rent after currency conversion.” To make up for it, she supplements her income with grants from international human rights organizations.
Asmaa points out that a rights lawyer loses a key advantage once abroad: “You’re a lawyer—you can’t work remotely. Donors prefer to invest in lawyers still on the ground. They’re cheaper and more effective.” That’s why, she says, “as an exiled lawyer, you must reinvent yourself to stay relevant.”
There are several paths for exiled lawyers, according to Asmaa: “Some pursue legal research, studies, and language acquisition while networking with foreign rights groups and continuing work with Egyptian organizations. Others seek asylum and are forced to take unrelated jobs in hospitality.”
Farouk* took a similar route, combining rights work with his former organization and working in restaurants to support his family. Still, he describes his experience as “relatively smooth,” largely because he left with his wife, who was pregnant at the time. “We supported each other.”
In mid-2019, Farouk began to feel that “things were closing in.” His wife was nearing the end of her pregnancy when he encountered a woman who had just given birth but was required to report to a police station every other day as part of her release conditions. “I didn’t want that for my wife,” he says. “We were already being targeted.” He planned a short trip to the U.S. for the birth, but they never returned. “While I was away, Mahienour and Baqer were arrested in a case involving multiple lawyers. I knew if I’d stayed, I would have been next.”
His departure marked the end of a legal and political career that began during his university years in 2007. Now, he was starting over in a world filled with thousands of other exiles from around the globe.
Farouk believes this is the toughest challenge for lawyers fleeing Egypt: “People think the world rolls out a red carpet for Egyptian dissidents. What we find is that many others have fled worse conditions.”
He relied entirely on himself. He continued working with local organizations, driven by “a moral responsibility toward Egypt,” while working in restaurants “because I needed income in the local currency.”
This phase lasted about a year until he secured residency papers and a work permit. In 2020, he began collaborating with American rights organizations focused on the Middle East.
Farouk is preoccupied with the question of impact. He weighs what he does now against his past work: “When I was in Egypt, attending interrogations or sneaking in a sandwich to a detainee felt more impactful—even though we were always afraid.”
He doesn’t dwell on the losses. He’s gained “a broader regional perspective” and shed the constant fear he lived with in Egypt. “In my last two years there, I lost the ability to sleep. I was always ready for arrest. The sound of car brakes outside would jolt me awake.”
He adds, “Now I understand what ‘first-world problems’ really means. I went from fearing prison to worrying about income. That’s an improvement, mentally and emotionally.”
While Farouk, who has lived in the U.S. for five years, hesitates to judge his experience, Ali*, who left just a year and a half ago and lives in Tunisia amid a civil society crackdown, sees his exile as a total loss.
Ali* expresses disappointment with local rights organizations, which he had expected to help him settle in a European country or connect him with programs offering financial stability. “What I found was that abroad, you’re on your own with whatever you’ve got,” he says. That, he believes, is why some exiled lawyers end up returning to Egypt despite the threats.
Ali* is currently pursuing multiple paths: learning research skills, English, French, and starting a master’s degree. But none of that, he says, replaces “the thrill of frontline legal work. It was exhausting, but worth it.”
Lawyers Still Inside: From Individual Resilience to Daily Burden
While dozens of human rights lawyers have been forced into exile, their absence has left a heavy void for those who remain. Karim*, a lawyer who has never stopped attending daily sessions at the Supreme State Security Prosecution since 2012, continues to defend political detainees despite what he calls “the lack of appreciation we face.”
He estimates that about 30 colleagues have either left the field or the country since 2012—roughly “a third of our group back then.” This has impacted the remaining lawyers’ ability to meet the ever-growing demand, particularly given the large number of detainees presented daily for questioning or remand renewals. “We spend no less than six or seven hours a day at the SSSP—over a third of the day,” he says.
Asmaa*, who now coordinates a legal team at a rights organization, notes that the issue goes beyond numbers. There’s been a “generational gap,” she says. “In the past four years, no new wave of lawyers has come in. The number of rights lawyers left inside Egypt is just a few dozen, rotating among organizations and burning out one by one.”
She adds, “When a lawyer leaves Egypt, it’s a double loss. Most are motivated by ethics. Without them, the field is left to lawyers who exploit detainees’ families.”
Despite everything, Karim insists on staying. “We know our role is no longer what it was. Release decisions don’t come from legal arguments anymore—they come from pardon lists. But our presence is still crucial to minimize abuses and protect detainees from fraud.”
Asked whether he might leave in the future, he answers confidently: “I can’t see myself anywhere else but beside the accused.”
It’s a sentiment shared by exiled colleagues like Asmaa, Ali*, Mohamed, and Farouk*—all of whom still identify, even in exile, as “lawyers on the ground.” The difference is, Karim chose to stay despite the risks, while others were forced to search for a new life—one that balances personal stability with an ethical responsibility they have not abandoned.
