Living Archive
Defenders.
An open record of human rights defenders across the Middle East and North Africa. Every entry is a case file — dated, sourced, and kept current.
173
Records on
the open archive
87
Currently held
detained · sentenced · on trial
57
In exile or under
transnational repression
11
In memoriam
killed for their work
The Record
Under TNR
Alaa Abdel Fattah
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a blogger and digital rights defender, was arrested in 2019 while complying with probation conditions. He has been held…
Hunger strikeSalah Hamouri
Franco-Palestinian human rights lawyer detained without charge in Al-Moskobiya since March 2022 under administrative detention, facing revocation of his Jerusalem residency and…
Amal Fathy
Women's rights defender sentenced to prison for criticising Egypt's failure to protect women from sexual harassment. Convicted on false-news and insult charges…
Mohamed Mahmoud Ebrahim Shahin
An imam and community mediator in Turin for two decades, Mohamed Shahin faces deportation to Egypt after Italy revoked his residence permit…
Ghanem Al-Masarir
Ghanem Al-Masarir, a Saudi dissident YouTuber living in London, was targeted with Pegasus spyware and physically assaulted by Saudi agents. In 2026…
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was detained for 52 days after posting verified footage of a US military jet crash in Kuwait, then stripped of…
Mostafa Fouad
Egyptian human rights lawyer living in exile since 2017. After co-founding HuMENA and launching a campaign to expose officials implicated in abuses,…
Zaki Hannache
Zaki Hannache documented arrests of protesters after Algeria's 2019 Hirak uprising. He was arrested in 2022, charged with terrorism-related offences, and held…
Medical urgencyAhmed Gamal Ziada
Egyptian journalist and editor-in-chief of Zawia3, now in Belgium. In August 2023, Egyptian security forces arrested his father and charged him with…
Medical urgencySlimane Bouhafs
Chairman of the St. Augustine Coordination of Christians in Algeria, advocate for freedom of expression and democracy. Abducted from Tunisia in August…
Hisham Ali Mohammad Ali
Sudanese blogger stabbed in Addis Ababa in December 2025 in what appears to be a targeted attack. His passport remains invalid and…
Medical urgencyAida Seif El-Dawla
Egyptian psychiatrist and co-founder of the Nadeem Center, one of the Arab world's oldest torture rehabilitation centres. Under a travel ban since…
