14 organizations calling on the Egyptian authorities to stop targeting jurists

Karim Adel - Cairo

14 independent international and Egyptian human rights organizations called on the Egyptian authorities to stop what they called "all reprisals and persecution against human rights defenders and independent organizations inside and outside Egypt".

This came in a statement arrived in Al Jazeera Net in the context of solidarity with human rights activist Mohammed Sultan in the face of a campaign of defamation and intimidation launched by the Egyptian authorities against him - according to the indictment of these organizations - following the activities carried out recently by the Washington-based "Freedom Initiative"

The Egyptian government, according to the statement, along with a private newspaper, accused Sultan of being a terrorist and working for foreign agencies. Media outlets supported by the government in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also taken these defamatory statements.

The organizations added that these attacks are part of a campaign of intimidation by the Egyptian authorities against human rights groups and persons because they highlight the grave violations of human rights in Egypt, forcing many of these groups to work outside Egypt because of the brutal repression against civil society And independent non-governmental organizations.

"The concerted harassment of Sultan is only part of a broader repression of rights and freedoms in Egypt, aimed at stigmatizing human rights defenders at the national and international levels and undermining the effectiveness of their work," the statement said.

The statement was signed by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms, Andalus Center for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Justice Committee, Egyptian Platform for Human Rights, Egyptian Front for Human Rights, Euro-Mediterranean Rights and Front Line Defenders , Democracy in the Middle East, Human Rights First, and the International Federation of Human Rights.

Mohammed Sultan, a former detainee and prominent human rights defender, launched the Freedom Initiative, an independent human rights advocacy group in Washington. The initiative worked hard with Egyptian and international human rights organizations to shed light on the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt.

Sultan spent nearly two years in prison on the backdrop of the so-called "fourth operational chamber" in which Egyptian authorities in 2014 and 2015 charged politically motivated charges against dozens of opposition political and press figures and was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in 2015.

In protest at his detention by the Egyptian authorities, Sultan, a US citizen, began an open hunger strike at the time and was supported by a global campaign. The US administration under former President Barack Obama pressed the Egyptian regime for his release and return to the United States on May 30, 2015 .