The Egyptian Human Rights Forum (EHRF) expresses its grave concern over the marked escalation in the Egyptian authorities’ targeting of the families of journalists, activists, and government critics residing abroad. These practices include arrest and incommunicado detention, home raids, summonses and threats, travel bans and passport confiscation, as well as the inclusion of family members in security and criminal cases and their referral to trial.
EHRF considers the recurrence of these practices to reveal an escalating pattern of “proxy punishment”, whereby the authorities use family members who remain inside Egypt to exert pressure on individuals carrying out political, journalistic, or human rights work from abroad, with the aim of forcing them into silence or compelling them to cease their activities.
The cases documented by EHRF also demonstrate an expansion both in the circle of those targeted—from parents and siblings to cousins and grandparents—and in the methods employed, which have escalated from summonses, threats, and travel bans to nighttime raids, detention, enforced disappearance, pretrial detention, and referral to trial.
The targeting of the family of political activist Amr Abdel Hady provides a longstanding example of this pattern. His passport renewal applications were denied in 2016 and 2019, while his mother was prevented from travelling to meet him in Turkey in 2018, interrogated, and had her passport confiscated. She was again prevented from travelling and had her newly issued passport confiscated in 2021.
On 16 August 2026, a National Security force raided his mother’s home at approximately 2:00 a.m. When officers did not find her there, they simultaneously raided the home of his brother, Ahmed Abdel Hady, and took him away in front of his family. Ahmed appeared the following day before the Supreme State Security Prosecution in Case No. 6252 of 2026, Supreme State Security, where he was accused of joining a terrorist group. The prosecution ordered his detention for 15 days despite there being, according to information available to EHRF, no indication that he had engaged in opposition political activity. His mother was also summoned and detained for approximately five hours. She reported that security officials instructed her to convey a message to her son demanding that he cease his activities, while threatening further measures against the family. In this case, using the family to deliver a message to an activist abroad becomes an explicit element of the pressure exerted against them.
EHRF also documented the case of journalist Abu Bakr Ibrahim Khalaf, who has lived outside Egypt for approximately 13 years. He reported that security forces arrested his brother from the family home and held him for around one month without presenting him before any judicial authority or disclosing his whereabouts, before he later appeared in connection with a case involving terrorism-related allegations. His interrogation focused on Abu Bakr’s activities abroad. Several days later, Abu Bakr received a call from his brother’s phone made by a security official—meaning that a phone confiscated from a detainee inside Egypt became a channel through which the authorities reached his relative abroad. Abu Bakr had recently been exploring ways to return to Egypt and visit his mother.
In the case of an Al Jazeera journalist who asked not to be named for fear of further retaliation against his family, relatives have been targeted for years through repeated raids and arrests of his siblings and other family members, as well as a travel ban imposed on his mother. According to family testimonies, security officials on several occasions directly linked these measures to his journalistic work abroad, raising serious concerns that the circle of targeting may continue to expand to other members of his family.
These measures have escalated significantly in recent months. In mid-July 2026, his older brother was rearrested shortly after his release and added to Supreme State Security Case No. 5228 of 2026. His younger brother was subsequently added to Ain Shams Misdemeanor Case No. 17050 of 2026 and detained for four days pending investigation. The journalist fears that the targeting will continue to shift from one family member to another, particularly amid reports that some relatives have been held incommunicado and denied regular contact with their families and lawyers.
EHRF has also documented the case of another Al Jazeera journalist who likewise asked not to be named for fear of reprisals against his family. In April 2026, security forces arrested two of his brothers, aged 20 and 19, both university students, preventing them from sitting their examinations. According to information available to EHRF, they remain forcibly disappeared.
The targeting also extended to his mother, who was assaulted during her arrest in 2024, resulting in a fractured rib. Her interrogation focused on her son’s journalistic activities and on her visit to him abroad. In August 2026, she was again interrogated for approximately 24 hours before being released. The journalist had also received threatening messages containing information and photographs relating to his place of residence abroad, while his family was simultaneously pressured to convey messages to him.
EHRF has also documented a similar escalation in the targeting of the family of Egyptian-British activist and engineer Mona El-Shazly, with five members of her family subjected to arrest or enforced disappearance in recent months. On 18 August 2026, security forces took her sister Shaimaa El-Shazly, a mother of three, to an undisclosed location following a raid on the family home. This occurred only two days after the arrest of her sister Iman El-Shazlyon 16 August. This was preceded by the arrest of her brothers Eid Saber El-Shazly and Hassan Saber El-Shazly from their home on 19 May 2026. They appeared before the prosecution five days later and were placed in pretrial detention in Supreme State Security Case No. 4489 of 2026, while the family has reported the continuing enforced disappearance of her cousin Saber El-Shazly since the same date. According to family testimonies, the raids were accompanied by assaults against her 65-year-old mother, as well as searches and damage to the family home.
In July 2026, Sobhi Ahmed Eid, the father of researcher and host of the Anbar Kollo Yesma‘ (“The Whole Cellblock Can Hear”) podcast Seif al-Islam Eid, was referred to trial in Case No. 6468 of 2025, following months of pretrial detention, in a clear example of the use of family members as a means of exerting pressure on activists and media workers abroad.
Mr. Eid had previously been detained on 30 April 2025 for 18 days, during which he was interrogated primarily about his son’s media activities before being released without charge. On 22 October 2025, security forces rearrested him at his home in Mandara, Alexandria, while simultaneously raiding the family home in Kafr El-Dawwar and the home of his wife’s father, and questioning relatives about Seif al-Islam’s activities. After a period of enforced disappearance, he appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, which ordered his pretrial detention before he was subsequently referred to trial.
The circumstances of the targeting are particularly linked to Seif al-Islam’s media work abroad, especially the Anbar Kollo Yesma‘ podcast, which documents testimonies from former detainees about conditions in Egyptian prisons. One of the podcast episodes published before his father’s arrest included testimonies concerning torture inside Al-Azouly Prison, while Seif al-Islam described what happened to his father as direct retaliation for his journalistic work. The sequence of events—from questioning the father about his son’s activities to rearresting and prosecuting him—demonstrates how criminal proceedings against family members can be used as a sustained means of pressuring activists living abroad.
EHRF notes that charges such as joining or financing a terrorist group, and the inclusion of family members in security or criminal cases, can give these practices the appearance of separate domestic law-enforcement measures. However, when an arrest follows political or journalistic activity abroad, when interrogations focus on that activity, or when security officials explicitly instruct relatives to pressure a family member overseas, any distinction between the domestic measure and transnational repression becomes artificial.
The Egyptian Human Rights Forum’s database for monitoring and documenting transnational repression confirms that proxy punishment is not an exceptional practice but rather one of the most common patterns in the Egyptian context. EHRF’s data indicate that approximately 72% of documented cases involved some form of retaliation against or pressure on family members, demonstrating the authorities’ extensive reliance on family ties as a means of reaching individuals whom they cannot easily target directly abroad.
EHRF considers this pattern to operate by transferring the cost of dissent from the person abroad to those closest to them inside the country. In doing so, it undermines the principle of individual responsibility and raises serious concerns regarding arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment, as well as retaliation against individuals because a relative has exercised their rights to freedom of opinion and expression or engaged in journalistic or human rights work.
In this regard, EHRF notes that the UN Human Rights Committee, in paragraph 16 of its General Comment No. 35(2014) on Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR/C/GC/35), identifies among the clearest examples of arbitrary detention the detention of family members of an alleged criminal who are themselves not accused of any wrongdoing, as well as hostage-taking. This principle is particularly relevant to cases documented by EHRF where the targeting of family members is not based on independent conduct attributable to them, but is instead linked to the activities of a relative abroad. Paragraph 17 further confirms that arrest or detention imposed as punishment for the legitimate exercise of rights guaranteed by the Covenant, including freedom of opinion and expression under Article 19, is arbitrary, and that enforced disappearance constitutes a particularly aggravated form of arbitrary detention. Paragraph 65 further establishes that the prohibitions against hostage-taking, abduction, and unacknowledged detention are non-derogable even during states of emergency.
EHRF also warns of a clear gap in the international response to transnational repression. Existing protection mechanisms often focus on the targeted individual in their country of residence, yet become significantly less effective when the actual source of pressure is the arrest of that person’s father or brother, or threats against their mother inside Egypt. If a journalist living in Europe is compelled to stop their work out of fear that their brother will be arrested, the chilling effect of the repression has been achieved inside Europe even if the arrest itself takes place in Egypt.
The Egyptian Human Rights Forum calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release family members of journalists, activists, and human rights defenders detained because of their relatives’ activities; disclose the whereabouts of all persons held incommunicado; ensure their access to their families and lawyers; end the use of pretrial detention and criminal and security cases as instruments of pressure and retaliation; lift arbitrary restrictions on travel and passports; investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment; and end the practice of proxy punishment.
EHRF further calls on the European Union and its Member States, United Nations mechanisms, and the countries of residence of Egyptian journalists and activists to explicitly incorporate the targeting of family members into their frameworks for monitoring and countering transnational repression; raise ongoing cases directly with the Egyptian authorities; and develop protection responses that extend beyond the individual living in exile to take into account the risks faced by their families inside Egypt.
