The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemns the decision of the Terrorism Circuit of the Cairo Criminal Court at the Badr Courts complex to deny a petition to unfreeze the assets of EIPR’s executive director, Hossam Bahgat and other human rights activists. The asset freeze order was issued eight years ago in Case No. 173 of 2011, commonly referred to in local media as the “civil society case”.

The court decision to deny the petition, which EIPR has not had access to yet, was issued despite the fact that The investigative judge overseeing the case decided last March to close the investigation. The investigative judge’s decision concluded that there were no grounds to file the criminal case, citing “lack of evidence” after 13 years of investigation into all aspects of the human rights work of EIPR and other independent human rights organizations. Bahgat’s lawyer submitted to the court an original copy stamped and signed by the investigative judge and president of the Court of Appeal, Ahmed Abdel-Aziz Qatlan, literally ordering “the revocation of the order preventing the disposal of [Bahgat’s] liquid and movable funds”.

The asset freeze order referred to here had been issued without trial based on a request from the same investigative judge as a precautionary measure pending investigation into the case, which state agencies used for more than a decade as a weapon to punish and intimidate independent Egyptian human rights defenders and to discourage them from continuing their work. 

Bahgat described the court decision as contempt of justice, like all procedures and developments related to this politicized case since it began 13 years ago. “Anyone from the state agencies who think they can continue to treat Egyptian human rights defenders as hostages should know that these arbitrary and invalid measures will not succeed today, just as they have failed for a decade to intimidate them or influence their discourse and human rights work,” Bahgat said.

This is not the only case filed against EIPR staff. Former executive director of the organization Gasser Abdel-Razek, director of the criminal justice unit Karim Ennarah, and administrative manager Mohamed Basheer are still subject to travel ban and asset freeze orders in Case No. 855 of 2020 (Supreme State Security Prosecution), which is still open, due to their human rights activism – despite their release from detention shortly after their arrest in November 2020. For nearly four years, the same court has refused to schedule a hearing to look into their appeals against these arbitrary measures or even to give them a copy of the court ruling upholding the Supreme State Security Prosecution’s request to freeze their assets.