Lawyer and head of the legal unit at United Group; columnist; former president of Group for Democratic Development and former secretary general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.
The case was dropped, but the machinery of restriction — travel bans, frozen assets — outlasted the charges and required separate battles to dismantle.HuMENA Editorial
Lawyer and founder of the United Group, specialising in individual freedoms and property law. Charged in Egypt's foreign-funding case; subjected to five interrogations, travel ban, and asset freeze before charges were dropped in 2017.
Negad El Borai is a prominent figure in Egypt's human rights and legal-reform community. A lawyer by training, he served as head of the legal unit at United Group, a law firm focused on individual freedoms, property rights, and rule-of-law advocacy. He founded and led the Group for Democratic Development and served as secretary general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, one of the country's oldest independent human rights bodies.
El Borai also worked as a columnist for Al-Shorouk, a widely circulated independent newspaper, where he wrote on freedom of expression, assembly, and association. He was appointed to Egypt's National Council for Human Rights, a state-affiliated body meant to advise on rights policy, but resigned in January 2014, citing the council's failure to respond consistently to documented abuses during a period of escalating repression.
He was involved in drafting model legislation to criminalise torture, drawing on years of documentation work with survivors and civil society partners. That draft became a focal point of state scrutiny.
In 2011 Egyptian authorities opened Case No. 173, an investigation targeting civil society organisations on allegations of receiving unauthorised foreign funding and operating without proper registration. The case remained dormant for several years before resurfacing in 2015 as part of a broader crackdown on independent organisations and their leaders.
El Borai was summoned for interrogation on 21 May 2015 by an investigative judge at North Giza Court. The questioning centred on his involvement in drafting anti-torture legislation. He was called in again on 3 March 2016 and charged with receiving illegal foreign funding and working without legal permission. Two further rounds of interrogation followed, including a fifth summons on 17 May 2016, again focused on the anti-torture draft law.
The repeated interrogations formed part of a pattern affecting more than thirty-seven organisations and dozens of defenders, many of whom faced overlapping charges and parallel restrictions.
On 26 January 2017 El Borai arrived at Cairo International Airport to board a flight to Jordan. Airport security prevented him from travelling after his name appeared on a list compiled by the investigating magistrate and the prosecutor general in connection with the foreign-funding case. The travel ban had been imposed without prior notice.
The ban was accompanied by an asset freeze affecting both his personal accounts and the institutional assets of United Group. The freeze remained in effect even after criminal proceedings concluded, requiring separate administrative appeals to lift.
Travel bans became one of the most common tools of restriction during this period, applied to more than a dozen defenders linked to the foreign-funding case, including Azza Soliman, Mozn Hassan, Hossam Eldin Ali, and others.
On 30 August 2017 the investigative judge authorised by the Cairo Court of Appeal to oversee Case No. 173 issued a decision dropping the charges against El Borai and three co-defendants: Azza Soliman, Magdi Abdel Hameed, and Hossam Eldin Ali. The decision also dropped charges against their respective organisations.
The ruling formally acquitted all four defenders. However, the travel ban and asset freeze were not automatically lifted. Additional legal procedures were required to remove their names from official restriction lists and unfreeze their accounts.
El Borai's case illustrates the use of prolonged investigation, asset control, and mobility restriction as forms of pressure that operate independently of judicial outcomes. The foreign-funding investigation served as the legal framework for measures that effectively paralysed civil society work, even in cases where no conviction was ever secured.
His resignation from the National Council for Human Rights in 2014 and his continued legal advocacy work during the period of investigation marked him as a defender unwilling to accommodate state narratives. The focus on the anti-torture draft law during interrogations underscored the state's sensitivity to documentation and legislative reform efforts that threatened to formalise accountability mechanisms.
This case file was compiled by HuMENA's Egypt research team from primary documentation, public filings, family-supplied legal documents, and confidential partner reporting. Editorial responsibility rests with the HuMENA Editorial Board. Where dates or facts are uncertain, the record errs on the side of the source material and notes uncertainty in the live archive at humena.org.
HuMENA welcomes corrections, additions, and take-down requests from the defender, their family, or accredited representatives. Material discrepancies are typically addressed within 72 hours.
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