Egyptian authorities have renewed their judicial harassment of Hossam Bahgat, a leading human rights defender and the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), one of the few remaining human rights groups in Egypt, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Supreme State Security Prosecution, an abusive prosecution branch, summoned Bahgat for interrogations on January 19, 2025, and charged him with "involvement with and financing a terrorist group" and "spreading false news," then released him on bail, according to the EIPR. The summons followed the release of a report by the group about dire detention conditions in a prison in Al-Sharqiya governorate.
In 2024, authorities allowed Bahgat to travel abroad for the first time since 2016, when he and dozens of other prominent rights defenders were prosecuted and subjected to arbitrary travel bans in the infamous Case 173, known as the "foreign funding" case. Authorities also prosecuted Bahgat in two previous free speech cases in 2015 and 2021. Authorities continue to prosecute and ban from traveling the former executive director of the EIPR, Gasser Abdel-Razek, as well as Karim Ennarah and Mohamed Basheer, two other EIPR staff members, whom security detained in 2020 for two weeks.
"The terrorism-related charges against the leading human rights defender Hossam Bahgat are a serious escalation in the Egyptian authorities' attempts to quash independent human rights work in Egypt," said Amr Magdi, senior Middle East and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The charges against Bahgat, premised on the important and legitimate work of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, should be immediately dropped. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi should rein in his agencies' relentless campaign against nongovernmental organizations whose brave work is indispensable for the Egyptian people."
