Rights groups criticize Egypt's continued practice of referring political detainees to terrorism courts, further undermining due process and justice for those held for extended periods without trial.
This statement was originally published on cihrs.org on 26 January 2025.
The undersigned human rights organizations condemn the Supreme State Security Prosecution’s recent referral of hundreds of detained citizens to terrorism courts instead of immediately releasing them. Defendants in these court cases – including political opponents, journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders – have been arbitrarily held in pretrial detention for long periods, in some cases exceeding six years. These terrorism circuit referrals belie the Egyptian authorities’ claims to be in enacting reform in the file of detainees, as thousands of citizens continue to have their detention renewed without due process for simply exercising their due process rights, whether it be expressing opinions or organizing peaceful gatherings. The undersigned urge the authorities to immediately release detainees and compensate them for prolonged detention periods.
In the last quarter of 2024, the Supreme State Security Prosecution referred no less than 90 political cases to terrorism courts, a number that exceeds the total number of cases brought to the same courts by the Prosecution over a period of roughly a decade (2013-2023). The current surge in referrals of political detainees is justified solely on the basis of security service investigations, violating judicial instructions to refrain from referring cases to trial unless they are supported by proven and specified facts and accusations against each defendant individually. The Court of Cassation previously confirmed that security investigations cannot be considered as the sole evidence in lawsuits.
The cases referred to terrorism courts include those of human rights lawyers Hoda Abdel Moneim, Ibrahim Metwally, Walid Selim, and Ahmed Nazeer El-Helw; translator Marwa Arafa; businesspersons Mohamed Thabet, Essam al-Swerky, and Sheikh Anas al-Sultan, and politicians Dr. Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, Mohamed al-Qassas, Gehad al-Haddad, and Anas al-Beltagy. Doctors, engineers, professionals, and professors at the National Research Center and Nuclear Energy Authority are also among those whose cases have been referred to terrorism courts.
In some cases, the Prosecution requested to charge detainees for alleged crimes dating over twenty years ago (in 1992, 2006, 2008, and 2013), raising questions about the legality of charges for crimes that occurred before the issuance of anti-terrorism laws and the formation of terrorism courts in 2014. Those recently referred to terrorism courts have been detained by the Prosecution under the same charges routinely and frequently deployed against political prisoners, including joining, financing, and promoting terrorist groups and colluding to commit terrorist crimes.
The recent referrals represent the latest iteration of the Prosecution’s sustained violations of due process and detainee rights. The rule of law is evaded, manipulated, and violated in order to prolong the punishment of political detainees, specifically through the illegal practice of ‘recycling’ wherein detainees are charged in new cases as their current term of detention for a previous case expires, under the same or similar charges for which they had already served their sentences. The ‘recycling’ of cases typically prolongs pretrial detention beyond its two-year legal limit, in violation of Article 143 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
In utter disregard of the law, the Prosecution in its sentencing refuses to include time served by persons in pretrial detention. In other cases, the Prosecution charged prisoners under new but identical cases after they had already served their sentence.
Detained since 2017, human rights lawyer Ibrahim Metwally was referred to trial in cases No. 900 of 2017 and No. 1470 of 2019, under the same charges. Human rights lawyer Hoda Abdel Moneim’s detention was renewed in Case 730 of 2020, even though she had been already sentenced to five years in prison in Case No. 800 of 2019 under the same charges. Heba Mustafa Abdel Hamid (a homemaker) was released in Case No. 277 of 2019 after five years in pretrial detention; she was then referred as a defendant Case No. 2215 of 2021, under the same charges as her previous case.
The gravity of the ongoing and escalating violations committed by the Supreme State Security Prosecution is compounded by expansion of its jurisdiction over a wide range of political cases. Rather than serving citizens as an arbiter of justice, the Prosecution has increasingly come to function as a weapon to retaliate against political opponents and dissidents.
Therefore, the undersigned organizations demand:
- Release all detainees who have exceeded their legal detention periods.
- Stop the Supreme State Security Prosecution from conducting investigations into cases of a political nature.
- Activate the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code regarding the inclusion of detention periods and put an end to the illegitimate practice of ‘recycling’ cases.
- Compensate victims of prolonged and illegal pretrial detention.
- In the event that a trial is initiated, the judicial authorities must fully adhere to fair trial guarantees for all defendants, and ensure their rights are upheld to legal representation and defense. Defendants must be able to access case documents and files. Defendants alleging violations during pretrial detention and investigation have the right to testify in front of the court and seek redress.
