Egyptian Front published a report called: “Stifling the public sphere in Egypt” about the violations committed against defendants held on remand in 8 state security cases for the exercise of their right to organize, freedom of expression, and peaceful assembly in 2019.
The year 2019 has witnessed a number of grave events that jeopardized human rights in Egypt. This has appeared in the violations committed during the litigation process beginning from the moment of arrest reaching the investigation session. This reflected a widening gap between rights granted by the constitution and the international conventions to which Egypt is a signatory and their actual implementation within the Egyptian context.
Egyptian authorities are still repressing the rights of the citizens. New cases are opening to include huge numbers of researchers, political activists, lawyers, and journalists. This in addition to the random arrest of citizens who are not engaged in the public sphere only to find themselves in prolonged pre-trial detention with arbitrary detention conditions facing charges of joining a terrorist group or spreading false news.
In 2019, the number of state security cases mounted to nearly 2000 cases. Amid the lack of transparency and withholding information from the defense, Egyptian front was able to monitor and release a report on the situation of 131 defendants from a total of at least 2554 defendants.
This report monitors the violations inflicted upon defendants held pending trial in the aforementioned cases starting from the moment of their arrest, to investigations, and the conditions of their detention. These violations include depriving the defendants of their rights to personal safety, bodily integrity, proper legal representation. This report also monitors the conditions of the official detention facilities.