4 human rights leaders accused of inciting against Egypt

CAIRO – 30 January 2019: Four directors of prominent local human rights organizations were accused of dispensing false information about the political situation in Egypt.

Lawyer Tareq Mahmoud filed a report before the Public Prosecution against Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI); Mohamed Zarea, the head of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS); Mohamed Lotfy, the executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms and Gaser Abdel Raziq, the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

In his report, Mahmoud claimed that the four human rights advocates met with French officials during French President Manuel Macron's recent visit to Egypt, where “they blamed the Egyptian state for enforced disappearance cases and alleged the presence of mistreatment and torture inside prisons in order to incite against the state, change the international stance against Egypt and convey a completely different picture of the internal situation in Egypt.”

Mahmoud called in his report for immediate and prompt investigations into the incidents mentioned in his complaint; in addition to issuing an arrest warrant , referring all the aforementioned human rights advocates to trial and probing the possibility they are receiving foreign funds from suspected bodies linked to the banned –Muslim Brotherhood international organization.