5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
August, 15 2011, 12:41pm EDT
Contact:
AIUSA media relations, 202-509-8194
Egypt Must Drop Charges Against Blogger Accused of 'Defaming' Military on Twitter, says Amnesty International
WASHINGTON
The Egyptian authorities must immediately drop charges against a woman blogger and activist accused of defaming the military on Twitter, Amnesty International said today.
Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, was summoned by military prosecutors on Sunday and later released on a bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,356) after posting messages on the social media network expressing concerns about the Egyptian justice system and the actions of the military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
"Asmaa Mahfouz is facing a military trial merely for posting comments which criticize the Egyptian military justice system and do not at all appear to represent a call to violence," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for Middle East and North Africa. "The Egyptian authorities' decision to refer Asmaa Mahfouz to a military court seems intended to send a message to those critical of the authorities that dissent will not be tolerated. The charges against her must be dropped immediately."
"Trying civilians before a military court is also deeply problematic: these courts are fundamentally unfair and deprive defendants of some of the basic guarantees of fair trial, including the right to appeal," said Smart.
She is charged with "insulting the armed forces" and "inciting the use of violence" on her Twitter posts.
No date has been set yet for the trial.
She is a founding member of the April 6 Youth Movement, one of the main organizing forces behind the mass uprising in Egypt earlier this year.
Asmaa Mahfouz wrote on Twitter:
"If the justice system does not give us our rights, nobody should be upset if armed groups emerge and carry out assassinations. As long as there is no law there is no justice, anything can happen and nobody should be upset."
She denies the allegations and following her release, reportedly told the Egyptian website Al-Masry Al-Youm: "I was only warning the military council that the absence of justice will lead to chaos."
The SCAF has said that 10,000 civilians have been tried by military courts since Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down as president earlier this year.
Amnesty International considers such trials, which were much used against his critics by former President Mubarak, to violate fundamental requirements of due process and fair trial, and opposes the trial of civilians by military courts.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
'A Lot of Words for Murder': US Military Says It Killed 4 in 'Lethal Kinetic Strike' in Caribbean
The latest strike brought the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
Mar 26, 2026
The US military said Wednesday that it killed four people in its latest attack on a vessel accused—without evidence—of smuggling drugs through routes in the Caribbean, bringing the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
The US Southern Command said in a statement posted to social media that as part of an effort to apply "total systemic friction on the cartels," it "conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations." Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response, "That's a lot of words for murder."
Human rights organizations, UN experts, and legal scholars have condemned the US boat bombings, which began last September, as flagrant violations of international law. Earlier this month, following a previous US attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, Amnesty International reiterated its position that the strikes "constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder."
The boat bombings have continued apace even as they've faded from the headlines amid the Trump administration's illegal war on Iran. The US has carried out nearly 50 separate strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific over the past six months.
As with the war on Iran, which lawmakers did not authorize, Republicans in the US Congress have blocked resolutions aimed at preventing American forces from carrying out additional strikes on vessels in international waters.
Wednesday's bombing came a day after a New York Times investigation found that a strike carried out as part of a joint operation by the US and Ecuadorian militaries "appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound," as the Trump administration claimed.
"We are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well," Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted earlier this month.
US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in response to the Times reporting that "this is deeply abhorrent, and raises questions about the intelligence used to justify the administration's boat strikes in the Caribbean."
"Many of us have warned it is likely innocent people are being killed based on dubious evidence," Beyer added. "Those concerns now appear to be justified."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'ICE Has Been Lying for a Year' About Being Allowed to Make Courthouse Arrests
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," said congressional candidate Brad Lander.
Mar 26, 2026
US congressional candidate Brad Lander is demanding a congressional investigation and civil rights actions on behalf of hundreds of people who have been "illegally abducted" at immigration courts across the country after the US Department of Justice admitted it has been relying on a lie put forward by federal immigration officials as it defended agents' arrests at courthouses.
Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote a memo on Wednesday to a judge who last September ruled that courthouse arrests could continue, based on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance which indicated that "ICE officers or agents may conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information" that a person eligible for deportation would be present at a court.
That guidance from May 27 of last year "does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near Executive Office for Immigration Review immigration courts," reads Clayton's letter.
"The undersigned were specifically informed by ICE that the 2025 ICE Guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests," Clayton wrote. "This regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error."
The letter represented a "jaw-dropping admission" by the DOJ, said New York University law professor and Just Security editor Ryan Goodman.
The ICE guidance has been used to underpin numerous arrests at courthouses for more than a year—those of the husband of Monica Moreta-Galarza, who was violently thrown to the ground by an ICE agent when she protested the detention at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City; Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high school student who was arrested when he showed up for a legal asylum hearing last May and was only released this month; and others across the country whose names and stories haven't made national headlines.
Clayton said his office became aware of the far-reaching error on Tuesday when it received an email issuing a "reminder that the May 27, 2025 Guidance does not apply to Executive Office for Immigration Review (Immigration) courts, regardless of their location.”
The US attorney wrote that Castel's opinion from last September, in which the judge ruled ICE's guidance clearly allowed arrests at immigration courts, "will need to be reconsidered and re-briefed for the court to adjudicate Plaintiffs’ APA [Administrative Procedure Act] claims against ICE on the merits."
Clayton issued the filing as part of an ongoing case in which immigrant rights groups sued over the Trump administration's arrests at routine immigration court hearings.
That case, said Goodman, is now one of more than 90 that Just Security has been tracking in which a court either "determined the Trump administration submitted false information or the administration admitted it."
Amy Belsher, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News that the revelation about the ICE guidance is "yet again another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country."
"It is now clearer than ever that there is no justification for ambushing and arresting people who are showing up to court," Belsher said.
Lander, the former city comptroller who is running to represent New York's 10th Congressional District, called Clayton's filing "a genuine bombshell, even by Trumpian standards."
"ICE has been lying for a year," said Lander in a video posted on social media. "Not just to you and me and to asylum seekers, but to courts and to prosecutors."
We just caught ICE in a bombshell lie.
They do NOT have the authorization they've claimed to arrest immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza.
Courthouse arrests must end now. There's never been a stronger case for why this rogue, lawless agency should be abolished. pic.twitter.com/MXIoJetffZ
— Brad Lander (@bradlander) March 25, 2026
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," he said. "It was time to abolish ICE a year ago. It surely is today."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Heinous Aggression': Iraq Accuses US of Bombing Medical Clinic, Killing 7
"The US war in Iran is going so badly that it’s restarted the US war in Iraq."
Mar 26, 2026
The Iraqi government on Wednesday issued a scathing statement accusing the US of bombing a medical clinic situated in a military base west of Baghdad, killing seven members of Iraq's armed forces and wounding more than a dozen others.
Sabah Al-Numan, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, called the attack an act of "heinous aggression" and a "crime." The US said it is "aware of the reports" of the strike on the clinic at Habbaniyah military base, but denied targeting the facility. Asked about the strike during a briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that she would "have to check with the Pentagon on that."
The Iraqi prime minister's office said the nation's government and military "possess the right to respond by all available means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations," calling the clinic attack a "violation of international law and the established norms governing relations between states" and warning that it "undermines the relationship between the peoples of Iraq and the United States of America."
Iraq's immediate response to the attack was to summon the US Embassy's chargé d’affaires in Baghdad and deliver "a strongly worded official note of protest." The prime minister's office said it also intends to file a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council.
"The US war in Iran is going so badly that it’s restarted the US war in Iraq," Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the developments.
Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged during a press conference last week that American attack helicopters "have been striking against Iranian-aligned militia groups" in Iraq "to make sure that we suppress any threat in Iraq against US forces or US interests. The US is known to have roughly 2,500 troops stationed in Iraq, which American forces invaded with catastrophic consequences in 2003.
The bombing of the Iraqi clinic came as the US-Israeli war on Iran—and the massive regional conflagration sparked by the illegal assault—headed toward its fifth week with no end in sight.
On the first day of the war, an elementary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was bombed, killing around 170 people—mostly young children. Trump administration officials have publicly denied targeting civilians—and the US president initially blamed Iran for the school bombing—but preliminary findings by the US military reportedly found that American forces were responsible for the attack.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular