Three Egyptian human rights groups said defendants tried in terrorism courts, especially at Badr Criminal Court, face repeated, systemic breaches of fair-trial guarantees that they say have turned proceedings into a conveyor belt of detention renewals and mass convictions.
The Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and Sinai Foundation for Human Rights said in a joint report issued on Monday that the patterns they documented from September 2024 through January 2026 put defendants’ lives at risk, chill lawyers’ work, and amount to a structural breakdown in basic safeguards inside the courtroom.
The groups said their monitoring relied on recorded testimony from lawyers and others following more than 59 cases, most of them heard at Badr Criminal Court, with one at Ismailia Criminal Court. They said only three of those cases have been adjudicated.
The report said authorities routinely deny defendants effective participation by preventing them from attending hearings, and that this violates the right to be present at one’s trial under Egypt’s constitution and criminal procedure law.
The same result is sometimes achieved by bringing defendants to court but keeping them for hours inside holding cells or prisoner transport vehicles without food or medical care, leaving them unable to follow proceedings or consult lawyers, the report said.
The monitored cases include 157 defendants over the age of 60, 106 women, and one minor. The report also noted that 14 defense lawyers faced security harassment and were accused of belonging to ‘terrorist groups’ because of their legal work.
Among other alleged violations, the report said judges and prosecutors rely heavily on National Security Sector reports without scrutiny, allow defense lawyers only minutes to make arguments, confiscate lawyers’ phones, and bar their assistants from attending.
It also criticized the unchanged composition of Badr’s First and Second Terrorism circuits for nearly seven years, saying that violates Egypt’s annual judicial rotation policy and has entrenched a uniform approach that routinely renews detention and delivers collective guilty verdicts, with acquittals remaining rare.
The report renewed criticism of holding trials inside police-administered facilities, including desert detention and rehabilitation centers, saying the locations impose punishing travel on defense teams and families.
In recommendations, the three organizations called on authorities to release, immediately and unconditionally, anyone detained or tried solely for exercising basic rights such as free expression or peaceful assembly, and to free other detainees who have exceeded the legal maximum for pretrial detention. They also urged the state to stop intimidating defense lawyers, ensure they can work independently, and to restore annual reshuffles of terrorism felony circuits to strengthen judicial neutrality and independence.
A year ago, the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review working group issued a report reviewing Egypt’s human rights record, including 343 recommendations from 137 states, led by calls to combat enforced disappearances, end the recycling of detainees into new cases, release political prisoners, and guarantee media freedom.
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty responded that Egypt had intensified efforts over the past five years to implement 301 recommendations it accepted in the previous review, saying it had made “tangible progress at all levels.”
In October, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sent an official memo to the Egyptian government urging “clear and tangible” steps to address “ongoing violations” in several key rights files, calling for the release of all those “arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their rights,” and for ensuring human rights defenders and civil society groups can work safely without fear of persecution.
