Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution has extended the detention of Ayman Essam, legal advisor to the Association of Old Rent Tenants, for 15 days. He remains under investigation in case no. 4881 of 2025, according to Hazem Salah El-Din, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights/EIPR and member of Essam’s defense team.
Essam appeared before the prosecution on June 21, two days after his arrest in Alexandria while en route to attend the founding meeting of the tenants’ association.
He was questioned about the tenants’ association and his stance on the government’s proposed amendments to the old rent law, according to an EIPR statement. Prosecutors then charged him with “joining a terrorist group and spreading false news.”
During the hearing, Essam’s defense argued that the charges were unfounded, noting he had previously attended parliamentary sessions with official accreditation as a representative of affected tenants. The defense insisted that his arrest was directly linked to his legal advocacy work.
“There was no actual investigation yesterday,” Salah El-Din told Al Manassa, adding that, “the defense team has not been granted access to the case file.”
Regarding the legality of the arrest, Salah El-Din said, “Unfortunately, these cases typically involve fabricated terrorism charges in security reports, which are then referred to State Security Prosecution. The prosecution subsequently issues arrest warrants. Essam could have simply been summoned instead.”
EIPR denounced the terrorism charges, stressing that Essam had merely fulfilled his professional duty by defending tenants impacted by the proposed law and advocating for genuine public debate.
The rights organization called on Prosecutor General Mohamed Shawky Ayyad to release Essam immediately and drop all charges. It also urged parliamentarians to heed their constituents’ concerns, safeguard the constitutional right to adequate housing, and halt efforts to pass the new rent bill until proposed reforms can be reviewed and discussed through inclusive dialogue with tenants and legal representatives like Essam.
Earlier, the heads of the Engineers and Doctors Syndicates had warned of the law’s social fallout, stating that the proposed changes, which would terminate rental contracts five years after the law takes effect, could spark “social unrest” and threaten millions of households.
In early May, Entessar Elsaeed, a lawyer and rights advocate who chairs the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, warned that the proposed bill could disproportionately harm women. “It pits tenants and landlords against each other and threatens social peace,” she told Al Manassa,
The Supreme Constitutional Court ruled in Nov. 2024 that fixed rental rates for residential units under Law No. 136 of 1981 — the so-called Old Rent Law — were unconstitutional. The court mandated Parliament to revise the law to “rebalance the landlord-tenant relationship.”
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had previously called in October 2023 for updating the law, noting that approximately 2 million units were vacant and unused because their original owners had died.
