Human rights activist Gamal Eid says the case is politically motivated revenge [Asmaa Waguih/Reuters]
An Egyptian court has approved a freeze on the assets of five prominent human rights activists and three non-governmental organisations in a case related to accepting foreign funds without government authorization. Saturday’s decision paves the way for criminal proceedings against the defendants, who have been accused of “pursuing acts harmful to national interests”. They face life sentences of up to 25 years each if found guilty. The rulings can be appealed.
Gamal Eid, a vocal critic of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, is among those affected by the order of the Cairo Criminal Court. “We know from the start the case is political and the aim is revenge against NGOs that expose the state’s abuses,” said Eid, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information.
The assets of Hossam Bahgat, the founder and former director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, will also be frozen. The court also froze the assets of three organisations and their directors; the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and its director Bahey el-Din Hassan, the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and its director Mostafa al-Hassan, and the Egyptian Right to Education Centre and its director Abdelhafiz Tayel. Bahgat, Eid, and nine others are also banned from travel in connection to the case that has been going on since 2011.
Amnesty International described the court order as a “shameless ploy to silence human rights activism”. Egyptian rights activists say they are facing the worst assault in their history amid a wider campaign to erase freedoms won in a 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Independent United Nations experts said in April that Egypt is closing down domestic NGOs and putting travel bans on their staff in order to obstruct scrutiny of human rights issues. See earlier posts: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/egypt/
Source: Egypt court freezes assets of rights defenders and NGOs – News from Al Jazeera
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
November 10, 2016 at 18:35
[…] The organisations denounce the systematic use of travel bans by the Egyptian government against human rights defenders and civil society in Egypt as a tool to crackdown against the independent civil society. This incident is part of a wider crackdown against human rights defenders, independent civil society, labor union movement and journalists, perpetuated by the Egyptian government that risks to bring to a complete eradication of the human rights community in Egypt. While civil society, human rights defenders, journalists and independent unions are the cornerstone of a pluralist and democratic society, and essential to the realization of national reform processes, the Egyptian government is heavily shutting down civic space and systematically violating the rule of law on security and counter-terrorism grounds. The recent ruling of the Cairo Criminal Court in favor of the asset freezing of prominent human rights organisations and human rights defenders is one of the most worrying developments. [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/egypt-court-freezes-assets-of-rights-defenders-and-ngos/] […]
December 31, 2019 at 10:46
[…] According to the ANHRI website, this is the fourth attack on Gamal Eid this year and comes amidst a wider crackdown on Egyptian civil society and human rights defenders. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/09/18/egypt-court-freezes-assets-of-rights-defenders-and-ngos…%5D […]
August 27, 2020 at 11:03
[…] Bahey Hassan left Egypt in 2014 after receiving death threats for his work. Two years later a travel ban was issued against him and his assets were frozen after he and his organisation were targeted by what Amnesty terms a “politically motivated investigation into the work of human rights organisations in case 173”, or the foreign funding case.[see https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/09/18/egypt-court-freezes-assets-of-rights-defenders-and-ngos…%5D […]