The Supreme State Security Prosecution on Sunday released El Nadeem Center director Aida Seif El Dawla on bail of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,100) pending investigation on accusations of “broadcasting false news with the aim of disturbing public peace,” lawyer Mahienour El-Massry told Al Manassa.
El-Massry, who attended the questioning with Seif El Dawla on Sunday, said prosecutors leveled only that charge against her. She said the investigation focused on the El Nadeem Center’s publication of a report on “ill-treatment and torture in places of detention,” based on a 2025 media archive.
She added that the investigator asked Seif El Dawla about the sources used to compile the report and the purpose of publishing it.
The report documented 188 news items and appeals for help from detention facilities involving torture and ill-treatment, saying some cases were not limited to prisons but extended to judicial bodies “which are meant to safeguard citizens, but instead become sites of state overreach.”
It also said that among the distress calls were those related to “the black hole” in Sector 2 at Badr 3 prison.
Seif El Dawla announced last Wednesday that she had been summoned via Dokki Prosecution to appear for questioning before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, without the summons stating the reasons, while noting the case number as 809 of 2026 (Supreme State Security).
Aida Seif El Dawla is a psychiatrist and human rights defender who co-founded and leads the El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, a Cairo-based independent group established in 1993. The center provides psychological, medical, and legal support to survivors of torture and other violence, and documents alleged abuses in detention.
In a related development, on Saturday, 18 rights organizations condemned the summoning of rights, political, and journalistic figures for questioning before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, calling the summonses “a deliberate tool to silence independent voices and intimidate those working in the public sphere.”
The groups signing the joint statement included the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Center for Egyptian Women Legal Assistance, Masaar, and the Freedom of Thought and Expression Foundation for Human Rights.
The statement’s signatories called for ending the use of vague, repeated accusations to pursue journalists, politicians, and rights advocates, and for halting the expansion of high bail amounts as an indirect punishment. They said, “Bail is, in principle, an exceptional legal measure intended to ensure a defendant’s appearance at investigation or trial sessions, and it should not be transformed into a means of punishment or deterrence.”
They also urged respect for constitutional guarantees that protect freedom of opinion and expression and prohibit imprisonment in publication cases, and called for ending repeated summonses and questioning that empty the right to liberty of its substance and turns legal procedures into security tools.
They said “this measure cannot be separated from a broader context of repression of the public sphere, where decisions of ‘release’ appear, on the surface, as mitigation, but constitute a new form of codified punishment.”
In April, eight rights organizations warned in a joint statement about what they described as a “recurring pattern” by the Supreme State Security Prosecution to re-target political opponents, either by questioning them or by re-detaining them after their release.
The groups said the rights to freedom and personal security, freedom of opinion and expression, and peaceful political activity are not grants that can be given and withdrawn, but inherent rights guaranteed by the Egyptian constitution and international covenants ratified by the Egyptian state
