Mostafa Fouad

Background and Work

Mostafa Fouad is an Egyptian lawyer with more than a decade of experience in human rights defence and civil society mobilisation across the Middle East and North Africa. He co-founded HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement and has served as its Executive Director. His work focuses on diaspora organising, documentation of abuses by Egyptian state and security institutions, LGBTQ rights advocacy, and transitional justice.

Fouad left Egypt in December 2017 as the space for independent civil society collapsed under Law 70 of 2017, which subjects non-governmental organisations to sweeping security oversight, asset freezes, and criminal penalties for receiving foreign funding or engaging in work the state deems political. He continued his advocacy from exile.

The Unmask Them Campaign and the Start of Reprisals

In January 2019 HuMENA launched the Unmask Them campaign, publicly identifying Egyptian officials implicated in torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, and other grave human rights violations. The campaign called for accountability and for repeal of the 2017 NGO law. Within two months Egyptian authorities began a pattern of reprisals against Fouad's family in Cairo.

On 17 March 2018 — prior to the campaign's launch but after Fouad's departure — authorities raided the family home without a warrant. On 3 April 2019, following the campaign, National Security forces entered the home again, broke into Fouad's former bedroom, and seized his laptop, books, papers, and notebooks.

Interrogation of Family Members

On 26 April 2020 a National Security unit forced entry into his parents' home in Cairo and summoned his mother for interrogation at National Security headquarters. His parents complied with the summons on 27 April 2020 and were interrogated. On 29 April 2020 they were ordered to return within two days.

In early May 2020 they returned and were questioned in detail about Fouad's human rights activities, his funding sources, and his connections to other named Egyptian defenders. During the same period a money transfer agent who had facilitated family remittances was arrested on accusations of terrorism financing.

Threats Against His Brother

On 20 May 2020 Fouad's brother Mahmoud, who lives in Cairo with his wife and two children, received a phone call from someone identifying himself as National Security. The caller demanded that Mahmoud provide detailed information about Mostafa's work and threatened that if he did not cooperate he would be arrested and prosecuted.

International Response

On 30 June 2020 twenty-seven international and regional human rights organisations — including the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, EuroMed Rights, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Freedom House, CIVICUS, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the International Service for Human Rights, the Maharat Foundation, MADA, The Freedom Initiative, Project on Middle East Democracy, and the Committee for Justice — issued a joint statement calling on Egyptian authorities to end harassment of Fouad's family and to cease using transnational repression to silence Egyptian civil society in exile.

Fouad remains outside Egypt. His family in Cairo continues to live under the threat of further reprisals.