Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

150 days of remand custody for Patrick, three months of postponement and renewal without the presence of Patrick or his legal counsel

Once again the prison administration failed to transfer Patrick Zaki citing a force majeure event. Patrick was scheduled for a detention renewal session on Sunday June 28 that was meant to take place for the first time before a Criminal Court panel from a counter-terrorism circuit, which sits at the Tora Subofficers Training Institute. But once again we saw a repeat of what has become the norm over the last three months, following the April 28 decision by the head of the Cairo Appellate Court to resume detention renewal sessions without the presence of defendants in criminal cases

Economic Misdemeanour Appeals court upholds verdict against blogger, with 3 years imprisonment and a 300,000 EGP fine for managing the "Egyptian Atheists" Facebook page

This ruling comes in a broader context of prosecutions and trials for online expression in general, and for religious expression in particular, and includes a wide range of persecuting of unconventional Islamic ideas such as criticism of some of the revered traditional figures of Sunni Islam, or the expression of ideas of non-Sunni Islamic sects such as Shiites, Ahmadiyya and the Quranites, in addition to expressing atheistic ideas or declaring unbelief and criticizing religions.

The Prison Authority is obligated to provide phone access to detainees and enable communication with their families and their lawyers

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) called on the Ministry of Interior and the Prisons Authority to assume their legal responsibility in providing the simplest forms of human contact in light of the continued suspension of visits for prisoners’ families, consistent with the rights stipulated in the Prison Regulation Law. EIPR demanded that the ministry and the Prisons Authority allow detainees and prisoners to communicate with their families and lawyers.

Coalition Letter — Request for U.N. Independent Inquiry Into Escalating Situation of Police Violence and Repression of Protests in the United States

The undersigned family members of victims of police killings and civil society organizations from around the world, call on member states of the UN Human Rights Council to urgently convene a Special Session on the situation of human rights in the United States in order to respond to the unfolding grave human rights crisis borne out of the repression of nationwide protests. The recent protests erupted on May 26 in response to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was only one of a recent string of unlawful killings of unarmed Black people by police and armed white vigilantes.

INCLO condemns the use of excessive force and the misuse of less-lethal weapons against protesters in the USA

INCLO calls on police in the USA to adopt clear regulations on the use of force and less-lethal weapons in the context of protest which conform with the recent UN Guidance on Less Lethal Weapons.It is well established that the use of violence by some protesters does not suspend the right to protest of all those gathered and it doesn’t provide a license to escalate police responses and use of excessive or deadly force.

EIPR: Re-publishes the proposal submitted to the Cabinet on the High Health Council

The proposal was prepared in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Population in 2014 and stresses the basic conditions for ensuring the formation of a council that will achieve a radical and sustainable reform of the governance of the health care system. EIPR stresses the importance of respecting these conditions while working on the law proposal. Through this paper, EIPR presents again the proposed law submitted in 2014, an explanation of it and a proposal for its formation and mechanisms of action.

EIPR releases its recommendations based on the participatory research on citizens behaviors and the use of public spaces in the light of the COVID19 pandemic

The research provides recommendations by the Right to Health Program of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. These recommendations are for relevant authorities, the most important of which is to transparently make accurate information available, disaggregated especially by geographical division of infection rates and available numbers of clinical tests.

4 May 2020

The Controversy of Banning Niqab in Public in Egypt

Calls for banning the niqab (the full face veil) in public places and state institutions in Egypt have recently re-emerged, gaining momentum after the High Administrative Court rendered a final judgment this past January rejecting the appeal of 80 niqab-wearing researchers at Cairo University and upholding the university’s decision to ban niqab for staff members during lectures.

We urge the Egyptian authorities to take steps to reduce the prison population and avoid increasing the number of detainees

EIPR calls on the Egyptian authorities not to exempt detention facilities and prisons from measures taken to reduce crowding and limit the spread of the virus, including police vehicles used to transfer people arrested for violating curfew and closure measures. When enforcing these legal measures, the authorities should always consider their primary objective—protecting lives and minimizing gatherings and density.

For the third time in two weeks, Patrick Zaki’s detention renewal hearing postponed invoking force majeure. We ask the Public Prosecution to do what is necessary and expected in these exceptional circumstances

We want to take this chance to reaffirm that there are many more people in remand and pre-trial detention that the Prosecution should release for their own protection as well as the protection of the whole society, consistent with the other measures taken in response to the Covid19 crisis.