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The crackdown got here after EIPR employees met with Western ambassadors in Cairo, the rights group mentioned on Wednesday.
Egyptian Security Forces arrested the group’s government director Gasser Abdel-Razek from his dwelling in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo, on Thursday.
EIPR mentioned in a tweet Thursday that the forces had taken Abdel-Razek to an unknown location.
His detention comes after Egyptian safety forces detained two different EIPR employees on Wednesday.
Karim Ennarah, the top of the group’s felony justice division, was arrested Wednesday whereas spending trip in Dahab, a coastal city in Southern Sinai, the group mentioned. His whereabouts and the fees he faces are unknown.
The group’s administrative supervisor, Mohamed Basheer, was additionally arrested from his dwelling on Sunday and questioned by State Security companies.
The crackdown on EIPR comes after a November three assembly the rights group held with European ambassadors in Cairo. EIPR known as the arrest an “unprecedented escalation” on Wednesday.
EIPR posted photos on Twitter of its assembly with the German, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Belgian, Dutch, Finnish and Swiss ambassadors. The assembly additionally included British and Canadian diplomats and targeted on “human rights issues as well as ways of supporting the enhancement of human rights in Egypt and globally,” EIPR mentioned.
EIPR advocates for private and spiritual rights, in opposition to the demise penalty and publishes investigation into violations in prisons and human rights abuses usually.
Those stances depart it susceptible in Egypt, the place in recent times the federal government has imprisoned and restricted the journey of 1000’s of dissidents, political activists, journalists, protesters and human rights defenders.
Egypt has additionally tightened already restrictive legal guidelines regulating the work of NGOs and the media.
The arrests “serve a heavy blow against the legitimate work of human rights defenders,” Amnesty International mentioned in a press release, including that the fees in opposition to Basheer have been “bogus terrorism charges.”
The French overseas ministry additionally expressed its deep concern over Basheer’s arrest and mentioned France intends to proceed its “frank, exacting dialogue with Egypt on human rights issues.”
The Egyptian overseas ministry rejected the French assertion as interference in home affairs and claimed that it was “an attempt to influence the investigations” in an ongoing case.
“The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights is registered as a company while it exercises other activities in violation of the provisions of [the] law,” the spokesman of the Egyptian overseas ministry Ahmed Hafez mentioned in a press release.
Several Egyptian media shops, largely managed by safety companies, have printed articles coinciding with the arrests accusing EIPR and different Egyptian rights teams of treason and inflaming chaos through the pro-democracy protests in 2011. They have additionally accused the group of assembly overseas decision-makers to tarnish Egypt’s picture.
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