Two persons showed up at the hotel the next day and attempted to enter the room where the workshop was taking place.
Two persons claiming to be Egyptian journalists were waiting for one of the participants at his arrival gate at Fiumicino airport in Rome and asked the taxi driver for the address of his hotel. Among the participants were Bahey Eldin Hassan director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies human rights lawyer Khaled Ali political scientist and columnist Amr Hamzawy Mohamed Zarea, president of the Arab Organisation for Penal Reform Ahmed Samih, executive director of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies Nancy Okail, executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and Moataz El Fegiery, Front Line Defenders MENA Protection Coordinator.Įgyptian human rights defenders who participated in the meeting were subjected to surveillance and harassment. On 20-, Euro Med Rights organised a meeting in Rome on human rights in Egypt which brought together academics, researchers and representatives of civil society organisations working on human rights from Italy, Denmark, Tunisia, Palestine, Germany, Belgium and Germany. On, Egyptian parliamentarian and TV presenter, Mostafa Bakry, broadcast the names and photos of a group of Egyptian human rights defenders who attended a human rights meeting in Rome on 20- on his TV program on the private Egyptian channel, Sada El-Balad, declaring them traitors and urging Egyptian intelligence services to abduct and return them to Egypt in coffins for criminal trial. On 25 August 2020, an Egyptian criminal court sentenced human rights defender Bahey Eldin Hassan to 15 years imprisonment in absentia.