On 17 July, Cairo Criminal Court is due to review a judicial order to freeze the assets of five leading human rights defenders (HRDs), members of their family, an NGO and their staff. They, and other prominent HRDs, are being investigated in Case 173 of 2011, the “foreign funding case”. If convicted, they could face up to life imprisonment.
- A judicial order to freeze the assets of Hossam Bahgat, founder and board member of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Gamal Eid, founder of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, 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 Hafez Tayel, director of the Egyptian Center for the Right to Education. A request to freeze the assets of CIHRS has also been made.
- On 27 June, award-winning women’s rights defender Mozn Hassan, who is founder and executive director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, was banned from travel. Cairo airport passport administration officials did not provide her with information about the reason for the ban, only that the Public Prosecutor ordered it. Mozn Hassan is named as a defendant in Case 173. Hoda Abd El-Wahab, executive director of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, was also banned from travel on 20 June by order of a judge in Case 173. The case is looking at the sources of funding and registration of Egyptian NGOs.
