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.
Press Releases & News
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.
We stress on that the source of this serious issue is the absence of a legislation that activates the constitutional article, without disruption to the rest of the constitutional articles that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and guarantee freedom of belief for all without discrimination, as well as the vagueness of the current legal system which opens the door to a such serious violation.
EIPR expresses extreme shock at the death of former president Mohamed Morsi as a result of the failure of Egyptian authorities to provide him necessary medical treatment. The wilful failure to provide adequate health care amounts to murder by neglect, according to the Egyptian penal code as well as international human rights standards.
On the International Day of Commemoration of Chernobyl, the EIPR publishes a position paper on nuclear energy entitled "The nuclear energy more expensive and more dangerous”. The paper calls for solidarity with the victims of the disaster and for drawing lessons and reviewing ideas on the use of nuclear energy, especially with cheaper and safer alternatives.
EIPR condemns closure of the Naga al-Ghafir church in Sohag by security and documents closure of 22 churches since enactment of the church construction law; demands reopening of closed churches and a decree regularizing the status of all churches that filed papers with the regularization committee
The Prisons’ Authority forced al-Helw to undergo a full external physical examination and inspection of her genitals, conducted by doctors at a general hospital, against her will and without medical grounds, which constitutes a clear assault on her bodily and psychological safety.
The EIPR condemns the Interior Ministry for holding al-Kashef in the Tora men’s prison in solitary confinement pending investigation in case no. 1739/2018. Detaining Malak, who is a transwoman, in a male prison facility makes her more vulnerable to physical and psychological violence.
