Articles for Egypt

Alkarama sent today an urgent appeal to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to follow-up on the situation of Mohamed Morsi, the former Egyptian president ousted by a military coup on 3 July 2013, and that of his Chief of staff, Mohamed Rifaat Al Tahtawi. Despite two hearings on 27 and 29 September, Morsi and Al Tahtawi did not appear in court, for alleged "security reasons".

On 22 July 2014, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, copied to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), to bring their attention to the case of Abdullah Ahmed Mohammed Ismail Alfakharany, a 24 years old student at the University of Cairo, Journalist and co-Founder of a news platform, Rassd News Network (

On 24 September 2014, Alkarama sent a communication to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) regarding the case of Hind and Rachaa Munir Abd Al Wahab Ali Nassr, two sisters arrested and detained because of their participation in a peaceful sit-in in Cairo.

On 17 September 2014, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health to ask the Egyptian authorities to grant Ibrahim Hassan Mohamed Asuhaimi, an arbitrarily detained elder, the immediate medical attention his state requires.

On 16 July 2014, the Secretary of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), Miguel de la Lama informed Alkarama that, during its 69th session on 24 April 2014, the WGAD had recognised the arbitrary nature of the detention of 12 Egyptian citizens arrested in July and August 2013 during peaceful demonstrations, and consequently tried before military courts.

On 14 July 2014, the police arrested 15 individuals during a violent dispersal of a peaceful demonstration in Al Fayoum. Detained in Badar Al Fayoum's police station since their arrest, they also report having been subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

On 27 August 2014, Alkarama referred the cases of 52 children subjected to torture and sexual abuses in Alexandria's Koum El Dekka prison to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Aged between 15 and 18, they were arrested for demonstrating peacefully against the regime; most have now been detained arbitrarily for over eight months.

On 29 August 2014, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health to ask the Egyptian authorities to accept Jamal Mohamed Assaed Tafeh's hospitalisation. Detained without trial in appalling conditions in Gamasa prison since 7 January 2014, the opposition member, who suffers from a serious heart disease that requires permanent medical attention, is at imminent risk of death.

On 4 July 2014, the police shot at peaceful demonstrators at the exit of a Mosque in Al Mattariyyah, with no legitimate reasons. Amongst these demonstrators was 22-year old student, Karim Jamal Mahmoud Mostafa Shama.

Hit three times in the head for demonstrating against the ongoing repression in Egypt, Shama died for expressing his ideas. He was affiliated with Al Wasat Party, a moderate Islamist political party whose members are subject to the same persecutions from the authorities as the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

14 August 2014 marks the first anniversary of the killing of al-Rabaa Adawiya and el-Nahda squares in Cairo, which claimed the lives of over a thousand Egyptians who came to demonstrate peacefully against the military coup on 3 July 2013.

Despite the unanimous condemnation of human rights NGOs and much of the international community, shocked by the scale of the massacre, no investigation has been conducted by the Egyptian authorities to establish the responsibilities for this tragedy.