Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms (also: ''Adala and Liberties Centre'') is an Egyptian

human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

organisation created in 2014 by lawyers and students, based in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

Founding and leadership

Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms was created in 2014 by lawyers, university students and graduates to provide legal support for students and other youths. , Adalah Center, based in

, was led by Mohamed el-Baqer (also: ''Elbaker'').

Actions

In 2015, Adalah Center helped free Abdel Khalek, a student detained for eight months after he arrived at a metro station at the end of a political demonstration that he knew nothing about, from imprisonment. Khalek's accidental arrival at the metro station led him into charges of belonging to the

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ('' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar, Imam and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings s ...

, demonstrating illegally, killing two students and attempting to kill a third. In February 2019, the Adalah Center, together with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), objected to the 20 February 2019 sudden executions of nine defendants without their families being informed and allowed to visit them, in violation of Article 472 of the Egyptian penal code. None of the nine defendants had had their personal lawyers present during questioning by the prosecution or during the trial, and eight of the nine had been tortured. The Adalah Center and EIPR described the 15 known executions in February 2019 up to 21 February as "part of the increasing use of the death penalty in trials that do not meet due process and fair trial standards, and a turn to increasingly vindictive application of the death penalty."

Repression

On 29 September 2019 during the

2019 Egyptian protests The 2019 Egyptian protests were mass protests in Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta and other cities on 20, 21 and 27 September 2019 in which the protestors called for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to be removed from power. Security forces responded ...

, Adalah Center leader Mohamed el-Baqer was arrested at the prosecutor's office where he was present as the lawyer defending

Alaa Abd El-Fattah Alaa Ahmed Seif al Islam Abd El-Fattah (, ), known professionally as Alaa Abd El-Fattah (), is an Egyptian-British blogger, software developer, and political activist. He has been active in developing Arabic-language versions of software and pl ...

, who had just been arrested earlier that day. The State Security Prosecution case number is 1356/2019, with four charges, that appear to be: "joining an illegal organisation", "receiving foreign funding" through that illegal organisation, "spreading false news" and "misusing social media" for the spread of fake news. El-Baqer and el-Fattah are to be held for 15 days in remand. , their locations were unknown.

References

Human rights in Egypt Organisations based in Cairo Human rights organisations based in Egypt {{Egypt-org-stub