The British organisation Index on Censorship nominated Egyptian cartoonist Ashraf Omar for its 2026 Freedom of Expression Award in the arts category, while Omar is spending his third year in pretrial detention. The organisation will announce the winners at its annual ceremony on Thursday 19 November 2026.
Alongside Omar, the arts category shortlist includes Iranian poet Ali Asadollahi, Russian poet and activist Artem Kamardin, and the Chilean art collective Lastesis. The organisation awards this category to artists and arts producers whose work challenges repression and injustice and defends artistic freedom.
Security forces arrested Omar, a cartoonist at Al Manassa, at his home on Monday 22 July 2024. The Supreme State Security Prosecution referred the case, No. 11846 of 2025 Fifth Settlement felonies, to the Cairo Criminal Court on 15 November 2025. The referral order kept the charge of financing a terrorist group, added the charge of participating in a terrorist group in achieving its aims, and dropped three earlier charges. Omar is being tried alongside eleven other defendants.
On Monday 12 October 2026, the court, sitting in Badr Prison, postponed his trial to a session on 14 December because the first prosecution witness, an investigating officer in the National Security Sector, did not appear, after two earlier postponements in May and July. United Nations experts said his detention is “arbitrary and illegal”, and press and rights organisations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Index on Censorship itself, called for his release on the second anniversary of his detention.
