Egypt releases three NGO members detained after meeting with western diplomats

Karim Ennarah, one of the three released, and his now wife, Jess Kelly, in London, in a Change.org image.

Egyptian authorities released three prominent members of a prestigious local human rights organization, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), last Thursday afternoon.

The release came after his arrest in November shortly after meeting with a group of Western diplomats, including Spain's ambassador to Egypt, was widely condemned inside and outside the country.

The arrests of its executive and administrative directors, Gasser Abdel Razek and Mohamed Bashir, respectively, and of the director of the Criminal Justice unit, Karim Ennarah, occurred in a period of only five days and were considered by the group an escalation “without precedents ”.

A fourth member of the organization, Patrick George Zaki, arrested earlier this year, still remains in prison.

The release of the three leaders of the EIPR has occurred after the intervention of former parliamentarian Mohamed Anwar El Sadat, who is part of a moderate opposition tolerated by the regime, and the current president of the Senate and former president of the Supreme Court, Abdel Wahab Abdel Razeq, closely linked to the regime.

Both proposed that the EIPR be officially registered as an NGO in accordance with the provisions of a law approved last week by the Government, which would open an escape route for the regime to order the release of the three members, according to the former. to EL PAÍS.

The EIPR submitted its application - something it had done previously - last Tuesday.

The mediation of El Sadat and Abdel Razeq also made it easier for the families of Bashir and Ennarah to visit them for the first time on Wednesday.

"That was the magic solution," says El Sadat, who advances his ambition to extend the same solution to other cases.

One element that could have been key to forcing the previous solution is the strong international pressure that the case has unleashed.

The first arrest, of Bashir, only received public condemnation from France, which expressed its “deep concern” about the events.

But after the arrest of Abdel Razek, the third, there has been a resounding wave of disapproval, including from the UN and Antony Blinken, the future Secretary of State of the United States.

The Spanish ambassador to Egypt, Ramón Gil-Casares, for his part considered the escalation "a real cause for concern" in a message posted on his Twitter account.

Share concern re.

# Egypt's arrests of three employees of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Meeting with foreign diplomats is not a crime.

Nor is peacefully advocating for human rights.

https://t.co/hR5JtLcAYI

- Antony Blinken (@ABlinken) November 20, 2020

Egypt's Foreign Ministry rejected in a statement "any attempt to falsely influence the investigations."

The three members of the EIPR were added to a controversial court case, along with other prominent journalists and human rights defenders, which includes charges such as joining a terrorist group and spreading false information, accusations often used to persecute the opposition.

Charges against the three released NGO members remain, El Sadat said.

"The arrests are part of a broader strategy, which has been going on for the last decade, that seeks to eradicate the human rights movement [in Egypt]," says Salma El Hosseiny, director of the human rights program at International Service For Human. Rights (ISHR), based in New York.

"His release is due to international pressure and is a sign that the international community can do it if it wants, even if it has chosen not to do so for the past six years," he adds.

Despite the release of the three leaders of the organization, the legal offensive against the EIPR has not ended.

The Egyptian Prosecutor's Office has ordered the freezing of all the assets of the organization, a decision that the EIPR considers in a statement that it aims to end up forcing its closure.

A special court for terrorism matters is expected to support or reverse the measure next Sunday without having provided information or having listened to the defense, according to the organization.

Likewise, the owner of the apartment where his office is located has sent them an eviction notice, according to Bahgat after Twitter briefly suspended the group's account.

And plainclothes officers showed up at Bahgat's mother's home Thursday night to ask where her son was, according to the organization.