Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to immediately drop charges against three human rights activists arrested after helping organize a peaceful public event demanding the release of people unjustly jailed for political reasons. The organization said the prosecutions reflect Egypt\u2019s ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and human rights advocacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The activists, pharmacist Hanan Altantawy and lawyers Mohamed Abu al-Dayyar and Wafaa al-Masry, are members of the informal Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience. They were arrested on 25 May in connection with a Cairo exhibition held earlier in the month to highlight cases of arbitrarily detained prisoners. Altantawy and al-Masry were released on bail on the day of their arrest, while Abu al-Dayyar was ordered into 15 days of pretrial detention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Amnesty, all three activists face investigations over accusations of \u201cdisseminating false news.\u201d Abu al-Dayyar also faces terrorism-related accusations, including \u201cjoining a terrorist group\u201d and \u201cusing a website to promote terrorist activities.\u201d Amnesty said the authorities presented a Facebook post about prisoners of conscience and material from the exhibition as evidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The public exhibition, titled \u201cThey don\u2019t belong in prison,\u201d was organized on 12 May at the Cairo headquarters of the Bread and Freedom political party. It focused on several people detained for political reasons, including activists, journalists and opposition figures. Amnesty said the Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience was formed in November 2025 to campaign through legal, media and political advocacy for the release of those unjustly imprisoned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International\u2019s Regional Researcher, said Egypt\u2019s prosecution of peaceful activists sends a clear message that the authorities have no intention of addressing the country\u2019s decade-long arbitrary detention crisis. Amnesty urged the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Mohamed Abu al-Dayyar and drop all charges against Hanan Altantawy and Wafaa al-Masry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The organization also warned that thousands of people in Egypt continue to be held in arbitrary detention simply for exercising their human rights. Amnesty cited concerns raised by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in November 2025 that the spread of arbitrary detention cases in Egypt may indicate a systematic or widespread practice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amnesty calls on Egypt to drop charges against three activists detained over a peaceful prisoners\u2019 rights event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[33,334,497,490,496,168,491,492,489,493,495,488,494],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-amnesty-international","tag-arbitrary-detention","tag-committee-to-defend-prisoners-of-conscience","tag-egypt","tag-egypt-human-rights","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-hanan-altantawy","tag-human-rights-activists","tag-mohamed-abu-al-dayyar","tag-peaceful-assembly","tag-political-prisoners","tag-prisoners-of-conscience","tag-wafaa-al-masry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietypost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}