The EIPR is monitoring actions by the government and Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to mitigate the economic and social impact of preventive measures to combat the spread of COVID-19. We are assessing such action in light of the protection of citizens’ lives, health, and income and the imperative not to endanger workers’ health and lives for the sake of running the economy at full capacity.
Press Releases & News
EIPR’s lawyers were able to obtain a confirmation today, 9 March 2020 from Supreme State Security Investigations (SSSP) that Patrick’s next renewal hearing is scheduled for Saturday 21 March.
Until the time of the writing the SSSP has yet to issue its decision on Patrick’s detention, although the prosecutor today has issued permission for Patrick’s family to visit him tomorrow in his new detention place in Tora, Cairo.Patrick Zaki stood before Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) in the Fifth Settlement, Cairo for his second scheduled hearing looking into the state of his detention pending investigation in Mansoura II Administrative Case 7245/2019 registered under Supreme State Security Investigations no. 1766/2019 .
His family were attempting to visit him today, 5 March 2020, on the first regular visit scheduled for pre-trial detainees; only to find that he was once again moved to Tora in Cairo. We have not been able to establish yet which of the various detention facilities within the Tora Prison Complex he will be held in, since he was only moved this morning.
Patrick was subsequently transferred from the prosecutor’s office to Talkha Police Station, but his family was surprised to learn yesterday the 24th of February that he was moved to Mansoura Public Prison. Previously The Public Prosecutor had decided to remand Patrick for 15 further days on his scheduled detention renewal hearing (which took place on Saturday the 22nd of February).
EIPR asks the Public Prosecutor to release Patrick George Zaki immediately, and the investigative authorities to close the investigation and dismiss the case, for we do not see any basis for criminal prosecution.
We ask the Public Prosecutor to release Patrick George Zaki immediately, and the investigative authorities to close the investigation and dismiss the case, for we do not see any basis for criminal prosecution.
EIPR demands the immediate release of Patrick George Zaki without pressing charges, and calls for an investigation into his torture and ill-treatment.
The application for leave to appeal was registered on 12 February 2020 under the no. 1372, and on Thursday 13 the prosecution accepted the application and set a hearing session on February 15 to look into the appeal itself.
The first of these papers, published today in Arabic (translation forthcoming), documents the most egregious and disproportionate of these measures which has become a routine practice (in particular circumstances) for the police: forced searches of personal mobile phones during arbitrary stop and search operations. This measure has no legal basis at all in Egyptian law, not even in the context of declared emergency. The paper provides a brief narrative of how this practice has evolved from October 2019 and until the end of January 2020.
EIPR demands the immediate release of Patrick George Zaki and an end to continued harassment and arbitrary detention of human rights professionals, members of civil society groups and journalists.
The Anti-FGM Taskforce is sadened and angered by the death of Nada, a 12-year-old girl, in the village of al-Hawatka in Assiut governorate. The girl died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM), at the private clinic of an obstetrician-gynecologist on Wednesday, 29 January 2020
The lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights filed suit before the Administrative Court against the interior minister and the director of the Travel and Immigration Department, both in their official capacity. The suit is seeking an expedited stay on the passive decision of the Interior Ministry’s Travel and Immigration Department to refuse to permit Ahmed Harqan to travel abroad
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said that three years after its adoption, the church construction law has failed to end violations of Christians’ right to worship and address related sectarian tensions. It criticized the security apparatus for shutting down church buildings and thereby prohibiting many Copts in Egyptian villages from engaging in collective worship.
The Egyptian initiative for personal rights publishes the text of a letter sent by international mental health professionals to the Health Committee of the Egyptian Parliament, the Secretariat for Mental Health and the Ministry of Health, prior to the discussion of new amendments to the Mental Health Law in Parliament on December 12.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights warned today that some of the amendments to the mental health law proposed by the government—in particular, those related to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)—violate the rights of patients to treatment and physical safety.
On Tuesday, December 3, the al-Waily Criminal Court sentenced officer Nader Nabil Bolous Shenouda and eight lower ranking policemen (sub-officers) to three years in prison in criminal case no. 4126/2016.
The first two were presented jointly with Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms, one on the death penaly, and the other on the infringment of the State's economic policeis on the rights to an adequate standard of living, health, and education.
These drastic economic measures are taking place alongside a severe crackdown on civil and political rights. Egypt’s civic space has been decisively evaluated as “closed” by international monitoring initiatives, and the government has recently ratified an NGO law that UN human rights experts have indicated could “devastate civil society.”
It is worth noting that the State Security Prosecution has recently developed a habit of throwing a lot of people who are mainly targeted because of their political inclinations into large cauldron cases with a long list of accusations and a huge number of defendants; defendants who do not necessarily have any links or anything in common, and on charges of incidents that are not only unrelated but that do not even have any intersection time or area wise.
