The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has filed a complaint with the Supreme Judicial Council against the continued imposition of punitive measures against three of its directors, coinciding with the end of the fourth year of sanctions including freezing their accounts, seizure of property and travel bans, without investigation or trial.

In addition to this complaint, which has been registered under number 364 (Complaints of the Supreme Judicial Council), EIPR also filed a new complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office demanding that the charges be dropped and the measures imposed on its three directors lifted

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These interventions were instigated a full four years after the Egyptian authorities launched an unprecedented security crackdown on EIPR between 15 to 19 November 2020, when security forces arrested EIPR Executive Director Gasser Abdel Razek, Administrative Director Mohamed Bashir, and Criminal Justice Unit Director Karim Ennarah, who were then interrogated by the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) and added to the charge sheet of Case No. 855/2020 Supreme State Security Prosecution Investigations.

The State Security Prosecution charged the EIPR leaders with what had become a routine list of charges, including joining a terrorist group while aware of its purposes; broadcasting false news and information that would disturb public security and harm the public interest, and using a private account on the internet to spread false news.Those charges were levelled against the three directors exclusively in relation to their human rights work at the EIPR. The SSSP subsequently ordered their remand detention pending investigation before releasing them all after widespread human rights and civil society condemnation on 3 December 2020.

Since that date, the case remains open, and the punitive measures imposed on EIPR members remain in place. Throughout a period of four years, neither EIPR members nor their legal representatives have been allowed access to any of the case documents, nor have they been allowed a copy or any form of access to the ruling issued by the Anti-Terrorism Circuit of the Cairo Criminal Court on 6 December 2020; the ruling which granted the Public Prosecutor’s request to prevent them from disposing of personal funds and property. 

This is not the first petition or complaint filed by EIPR staff against decisions issued against them without trial or conviction. Over the past years, they have submitted several petitions to the head of the Cairo Court of Appeals regarding the travel ban and the asset and bank freezes, but the court has failed to schedule a single hearing to consider the matter over the four years. The Cairo Court of Appeal's justification for not scheduling a hearing was that it was waiting for a communique from the Supreme State Security Prosecution to provide the court with the required information regarding the precautionary measures, which the SSSP has repeatedly failed to provide, thus denying the complainants a hearing, in clear violation of Article 208 bis b of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which guarantees the right of those affected by asset seizure decisions to appeal the decision every three months.

Moreover, according to the Minister of Interior's decision regulating travel bans, Decree No. 2214 of 1994, as amended by Decree No. 54 of 2013, the validity of decisions issued by judicial authorities to include a person on travel ban lists expires after three years; this period - that maximum allowed by the decree - has been exceeded, and EIPR representatives have tried to submit appeals and requests to lift the travel bans to the Public Prosecutor, to no avail.

The continued targeting of the three EIPR directors with these arbitrary measures since November 2020 happened against the backdrop of many long years of security targeting and intermittent judicial harassment against independent human rights organisations in general, and against EIPR  for its human rights work over the 22 years since its establishment. During the last four years in particular, current EIPR executive direction Hossam Bahgat was tried before the Economic Misdemeanours Court on charges of insulting the Elections Authority and spreading false news, and  convicted in November 2021 for a tweet he posted a year earlier about irregularities in the previous parliamentary elections. Earlier this year, Case 173 of 2011, more commonly known as the civil society organisations case, was closed after 13 years of investigations and the precautionary measures of travel bans and asset freeze against Bahgat were lifted after eight years of their placement. In July 2023, the Emergency State Security Misdemeanour Court sentenced Patrick Zaki, an EIPR researcher, to three years in prison after he remained in pre-trial detention for nearly two years for an article he published online about the rights of Coptic Egyptians, before the President issued a presidential pardon for Zaki. 

EIPR reiterates its demands to drop the trumped-up charges brought by the Supreme State Security Prosecution in November 2020 against its leaders without basis or evidence, and to end the unjust punitive measures that have prevented  Mohamed Bashir, Karim Ennarah and Gasser Abdel Razek from accessing their personal funds and from travelling for four years..