Since June 2013, Egyptian authorities have increasingly used pretrial detention as a punitive measure to silence activists, journalists, and peaceful political dissidents. The number of pretrial detainees in Egypt has exponentially increased and the periods of pretrial detention have exceeded international legal standards and even domestic maximums.

Egypt’s legal framework violates its international human rights obligation to use pretrial detention as a last resort and only if necessary, especially in the absence of well-founded charges.

The attached briefing paper prepared by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights provides crucial background on the punitive use of pretrial detention in Egypt and spotlights the paradigmatic case of Mahmoud Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, a prisoner of conscience in Egypt who Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights represents before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention