Ten-Year Sentences on \u201cTerrorism\u201d Charges for Two Children<\/h2>\n
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights condemned the Benha court\u2019s judgment<\/a> of 23 December sentencing two children to ten years in prison on terrorism-related charges over alleged online activity. Case No. 4240 of 2024 involved grave violations: the children were presented to the Supreme State Security Prosecution as adults and denied Child Law safeguards.<\/p>\n A prominent defendant is Mohamed Emad, an American child of Egyptian descent arrested during a summer holiday and forcibly disappeared for two weeks. EIPR stressed that charges of establishing a terrorist group are legally illogical, particularly because terrorism law requires at least three people to constitute a \u201cgroup.\u201d<\/p>\n EIPR urged the Interior Minister to implement<\/a> the 23 December 2025 release order for Ahmed Sabry Nassef, who had spent nine years detained without a single conviction. Since secondary school, he has been recycled through ten cases carrying identical charges.<\/p>\n Human rights organisations also demanded an urgent investigation into the death<\/a> of Tarek Ashraf Mahfouz at El-Haram Police Station on 24 December. His family observed visible injuries on his body, raising fears of torture. They requested that surveillance footage be secured and examined.<\/p>\n Recommended reading: Medical Neglect in Egyptian Prisons: When Illness Becomes an Additional Punishment<\/a><\/p>\n December saw several developments concerning political activity and security prosecutions. An appeals court upheld economist Abdel Khalek Farouk\u2019s five-year prison sentence for publishing false news through critical articles. Meanwhile, activist Alaa Abdel Fattah\u2019s family announced his arrival in London after his name was removed from travel ban lists.<\/p>\n Talaat Khalil, chair of the Civil Democratic Movement\u2019s board of trustees, announced<\/a> that he would stand trial on 28 December on charges related to parliamentary elections. Prosecutors also summoned candidate Lamis Khattab for allegedly insulting an electoral committee chair. Candidates regarded these measures as targeting their documentation of electoral violations.<\/p>\n In cases involving support for Palestine, State Security Prosecution referred<\/a> 64 defendants to trial in two separate cases, including developer Ahmed Bahgat, being tried as a \u201cfugitive\u201d despite his family\u2019s reports that he had been forcibly disappeared for nineteen months.<\/p>\n Writer and novelist Ammar Ali Hassan was also questioned<\/a> over his writings and intellectual positions, then released on bail pending the case.<\/p>\n Ahmed Sabry Nassef\u2019s case renewed attention to recurring violations associated with arrest and detention in Egypt. After his arrest, he was forcibly disappeared before later appearing before investigators. His whereabouts were not officially disclosed during the disappearance, and he was not fully allowed to communicate with family or counsel.<\/p>\n According to EIPR<\/a> and other human rights organisations, Nassef faces investigation procedures lacking minimum fair-trial guarantees. He remains in pretrial detention on vague charges without a clear referral to trial or defined detention limit.<\/p>\n Recommended reading: Prisoners\u2019 Letters in Egypt: Recording Existence and Resisting Oblivion<\/a><\/p>\n Despite the closure in March 2024 of Case 173 on foreign funding after thirteen years of harassment, Egyptian civil society faces a new wave of \u201cadministrative strangulation\u201d through NGO Law No. 149 of 2019.<\/p>\n A Zawia3 report documented obstacles beginning with establishment. Mohamed Abdel Salam, executive director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, said activating its bank account took eleven months because of unofficial security interference. Foreign grants were then rejected without explanation despite compliance with inspections and documentation requirements, leaving the association without any activity funding since licensing.<\/p>\n Read the full report: From Travel Bans to \u201cWork Bans\u201d: How Civil Society Is Strangled by Law<\/a><\/p>\n A Zawia3 survey of one hundred people across governorates revealed an enormous gap between citizens and political parties. Ninety-seven percent said they did not trust parties, while 92% regarded them as mere \u201cpolitical decoration\u201d supplementing elections. Respondents described parties as \u201cshops\u201d appearing seasonally to distribute food such as oil and sugar and collect votes, then disappearing once elections ended. Electoral participation has fallen sharply, reaching a historic low of 17.1% in the latest Senate elections.<\/p>\n Although Egypt has more than one hundred licensed parties, their actual presence remains limited and fragile: only around thirteen held seats in the House of Representatives before the 2025 elections.<\/p>\n Dr Amr Hashem Rabie, an Al-Ahram Centre adviser, attributes the crisis to parties\u2019 disconnection from the public and lack of internal democracy, operating through individual leadership. He says the absolute-list electoral system, rather than proportional representation, strengthens independents and political money at the expense of programmatic party activity. More than 95% of Egyptians are thus classified politically as independents reluctant to join any party.<\/p>\n Read the full report: Egypt: 100 Parties, Zero Politics<\/a><\/p>\n The \u201cGender Justice and the Law\u201d initiative<\/a>, involving four UN agencies, issued an update exposing the gap between official rhetoric and Egypt\u2019s legislation. It found 54% of legal indicators\u201439 of 73\u2014negative or incomplete, particularly regarding protection from violence, family matters and health and reproductive rights.<\/p>\n The report criticised reliance on abstract constitutional provisions or strategies, such as the 2015 strategy, without meaningful implementation. It noted Egypt\u2019s low global rankings on gender-gap and equal-pay indicators, reflecting resistance to substantive equality within the family.<\/p>\n Feminist organisations launched the campaign<\/a> \u201cJustice, Not Leniency,\u201d demanding repeal of Penal Code provisions, including Articles 17, 60 and 237, that allow reduced sentences for killing or abusing women under claims of \u201cdiscipline\u201d or \u201chonour.\u201d The campaign documented 29 lenient judgments in recent years.<\/p>\n Feminist activist Shaimaa Tantawy, co-founder of Barah Aman, said the campaign, launched by several feminist groups during the sixteen days of activism, critically analyses five Penal Code articles\u20147, 17, 60, 237 and 274\u2014used to reduce sentences in cases of violence and killings against women. It produced a research paper unpacking legal interpretations that entrench violence, supported by articles and monitoring of recent lenient judgments, demonstrating the urgent need for comprehensive reform to protect women and deliver timely justice.<\/p>\n The Centre for Egyptian Women\u2019s Legal Assistance simultaneously launched \u201cOpen the Doors of Justice,\u201d<\/a> seeking a new personal status law to replace the outdated 1920 law. It said its proposed \u201cA More Just Family\u201d law remained shelved despite presidential promises in 2022 to amend the legislation.<\/p>\n The Sawt initiative issued a fact sheet<\/a> on women\u2019s needs to strengthen health and bodily rights, seeking legal protection from female genital mutilation and forced marriage. The Centre for Egyptian Women\u2019s Legal Assistance also launched \u201cKnowledge Protects\u201d<\/a> and announced preparation of Egypt\u2019s first comprehensive school-oriented sexuality education curriculum.<\/p>\n The \u201cWords That Hurt\u201d<\/a> campaign concluded its activities examining hate speech and discrimination against women in proverbs and jokes, urging media outlets to adopt clear policies against such discourse.<\/p>\n A human rights report<\/a> titled \u201cDisciplining Society\u201d documented prosecution of 327 people in 252 cases since April 2020 under the claim of \u201cprotecting family values.\u201d It described an institutional approach using law for social control and discrimination against women and poorer people. The campaign peaked in summer 2025, when 167 people, mostly women, were arrested in fewer than four months, alongside expanded use of Cybercrime Law Article 25 and serious charges such as human trafficking and money laundering without evidence.<\/p>\n The report warned against vague provisions and official statements fuelling \u201cmoral panic\u201d by publishing defendants\u2019 information before conviction, gravely violating privacy, freedom of expression and constitutional obligations.<\/p>\n Recommended reading: Violence against Egypt\u2019s Women: Missing Laws and Years of Retreat<\/a><\/p>\n After a legal battle beginning in 2015, Alexandria\u2019s Wadi El-Qamar resident Hany Abdel Fattah succeeded<\/a> in collecting EGP one million compensation from Portland Cement Company, Titan, for health damage from coal emissions.<\/p>\n The victory followed the company\u2019s exhaustion of delaying tactics and legal manoeuvres to obstruct enforcement, including claims of financial incapacity and sham recovery suits over seized movable property. EIPR described it as the culmination of a long struggle for residents\u2019 right to a healthy environment.<\/p>\n Residents of Alexandria\u2019s Lo\u2019lo\u2019at Smouha tower face administrative escalation<\/a> to remove them for a neighbouring housing project. Gas and water companies cut services last December without prior notice and in violation of the law.<\/p>\n Despite pending administrative court challenges to expropriation, authorities continue pressuring residents who regularly pay their bills. EIPR lawyers described cutting essential utilities as indirect coercion to leave homes in exchange for compensation residents regard as paltry.<\/p>\n Around seventy Oriental Weavers workers were arbitrarily dismissed after creating a social media group to discuss working conditions.<\/p>\n The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms documented violations<\/a> surrounding dismissals, including body searches, intrusion into personal accounts, monitoring and false security complaints to incite action against workers. It urged the Labour Ministry to intervene, reinstate workers and stop practices violating labour law and ILO conventions on freedom of association.<\/p>\n Under the title \u201cThe New Labour Law: 42 Protests in 100 Days, and the Minimum Wage Is Ink on Paper,\u201d a Zawia3 report documented around 42 protests between September and mid-December, based on newspaper archives and workers\u2019 statements. Sectors ranged from sugar<\/a> and water<\/a> factories to furniture companies<\/a>, hydropower stations<\/a> and media organisations<\/a>. Despite officials\u2019 promises, many workers still earn below the legal minimum, while protests sometimes prompt management retaliation, indicating failed implementation and inadequate workplace oversight.<\/p>\n Read the full report: The New Labour Law: 42 Protests in 100 Days, and the Minimum Wage Is Ink on Paper<\/a><\/p>\n Al-Bawaba News management responded to journalists\u2019 sit-in, ongoing since November, with further repression, filing insult and defamation complaints against protesters and syndicate board members Eman Auf and Mahmoud Kamel.<\/p>\n Journalists protest low pay and failure to implement the minimum wage. Management responded<\/a> by withholding November salaries, which human rights organisations described<\/a> as a blatant threat to peaceful union activity and a violation of employees\u2019 financial rights.<\/p>\n A Zawia3 report documented systematic exclusion affecting around 1,900 retired journalists and their beneficiaries under Journalists Syndicate Law No. 76 of 1970, particularly Article 97, described as \u201cprofessional execution.\u201d Retirement permanently transfers journalists to the non-practising register, depriving them of voting, candidacy, returning to practice and holding leadership positions even if they remain capable of contributing.<\/p>\nContinued Case Recycling and Deaths in Detention<\/h2>\n
Political and Electoral Prosecutions: From Farouk to Alaa Abdel Fattah<\/h2>\n
Ahmed Sabry Nassef: From Enforced Disappearance to Detention without Safeguards<\/h2>\n
Civil Society: From Judicial Prosecution to \u201cAdministrative Strangulation\u201d<\/h2>\n
Political Parties in Public Perception: From \u201cHistoric Parties\u201d to \u201cElection Shops\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Women\u2019s Rights<\/h1>\nEgypt\u2019s Equality Gap: A UN Report Exposes the Illusion<\/h2>\n
Feminist Mobilisation against \u201cLeniency\u201d and Personal Status Laws<\/h2>\n
Reproductive Health and Challenging Hate Speech<\/h2>\n
\u201cDisciplining Society\u201d: \u201cFamily Values\u201d Prosecutions as Class and Gender Discrimination<\/h2>\n
Economic and Social Justice<\/h1>\nWadi El-Qamar Victory: EGP One Million Compensation against Titan<\/h2>\n
Lo\u2019lo\u2019at Smouha: Cutting Utilities as a Tool of Forced Displacement<\/h2>\n
Labour and Trade Union Rights<\/h1>\nArbitrary Dismissal and Privacy Violations at Oriental Weavers<\/h2>\n
The Al-Bawaba News Crisis: A Sit-in Met with Complaints<\/h2>\n
Veterans in the Journalists Syndicate: \u201cProfessional Execution\u201d under Outdated Law<\/h2>\n