Blow vs. rights in Egypt

An Egyptian court on Sunday upheld a prosecutors’ decision to freeze the assets of three senior staff members at one of the country’s most prominent human-rights groups.

The three workers were freed Thursday after being arrested last month and slapped with terrorism-related charges.

Their release came after an international outcry over the government’s crackdown on one of the last rights groups still operating in Egypt.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights tweeted Sunday that a Cairo court handling terror-related cases ordered a temporary freeze of “all personal assets and property” of the three members, including its executive director, Gasser Abdel-Razek.

It said the court ruling came “without hearing any oral arguments or allowing defense lawyers to even read the freeze order.” The decision did not apparently cover EIPR’s assets as an entity, it said.

The arrests of AbdelRazek, along with EIPR’s criminal-justice director, Karim Ennarah, and administrative director Mohammed Basheer, came after the organization hosted foreign diplomats for 13 Western countries to discuss the humanrights situation in Egypt. The three were released pending an investigation into charges of belonging to a terrorist group and spreading false information.

A researcher for the group arrested in February, Patrick Zaki, was awaiting the court’s decision Sunday on an extension of his detention, said Hossam Bahgat, who founded the organization 18 years ago and stepped back in as acting head after AbdelRazek’s arrest. Bahgat’s assets have been frozen for years, and he’s banned from traveling abroad.

The court did not communicate its decision, despite the end of its working day, EIPR said.

Egypt is a US ally with deep economic ties to European countries.