On Monday, 22 September 2025, the first hearing of the trial of human rights lawyer and coordinator of the Association of the Families of the Forcibly Disappeared, Ibrahim Metwally, took place. The trial is based on Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) Case No. 786/2020, his third simultaneous trial on similar charges - and the third in which neither nor Ibrahim nor his legal defence were presented with any evidence or witnesses. Those trials follow eight years that he had already spent in pretrial detention, in violation of the legal limits, and that he mostly spent detained in squalid prison conditions.

The court decided to postpone the case until the hearing on 8 December to allow the defence to review the case files for the first time since the investigation was launched over five years ago, in 2020. According to the indictment filed by the SSSP, Metwally is being tried with 28 other defendants on terrorism-related charges allegedly committed between July 1992 and December 2024. This means that the crimes are alleged to have begun when some of the defendants, such as Anas Elbeltagy and Al Hassan Al Shater, were less than a year old.

The new case includes defendants who have already been sentenced or were already in pretrial detention on other charges, such as Dr. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (73 years old), the leader of the Misr Alkawyia (Strong Egypt) Party and former presidential candidate, and his deputy, Mohamed Al Qassas. Both were arrested in 2018 and are currently serving sentences of 15 and 10 years, respectively, which were issued by an Emergency Supreme State Security Court in 2022.

In December 2024, both Al Qassas and Aboul Fotouh were ‘recycled’ into Case No. 786, which first surfaced two years after their arrest. They were referred directly to trial on the same day the investigation concluded. The case also includes lawyer Ahmed Abou Baraka, whose trial in another case began last June, as well as Anas Elbeltagy, who has been detained without a single conviction for nearly 12 years.

A number of the detained defendants did not attend the Monday hearing at the Badr Prison Complex. Furthermore, many lawyers were unable to communicate with their clients who were present, as security personnel completely separated the defendants from their legal counsel.

During the hearing, Ibrahim Metwally’s defence team, which includes a lawyer from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), once again requested that he be allowed to undergo an urgent prostate surgery. Meanwhile, several defendants, including Ahmed Abou Baraka and Gehad Essam El Haddad, informed the court that an officer assaulted them during a previous hearing on 16 August, which was held to consider other cases in which they are defendants. Other defendants requested that the court look into the situation of other defendants who are on a partial hunger strike in Badr 3 prison. Defendants, including Mohamed Al Qassas, also complained that throughout the day of the hearing, they were kept in a detention room inside the court building without being allowed to use the toilet or being given food or water.

Separately, the doctor present at the court stated that two defendants needed medical intervention, without clarifying whether they were suffering from exhaustion due to the poor detention conditions at the court or if the matter was more serious.

EIPR emphasises that prosecuting its client on the same charges in multiple cases simultaneously constitutes a deliberate disregard for the fundamental principle of protection from double jeopardy, enshrined in the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, which stipulate that a person cannot be tried twice for the same act. The withholding of case files and the lack of a serious investigation for over eight years can only be explained as an act of retaliation and punishment against Metwally for exercising his legitimate right as a father and a lawyer, who simply sought answers to questions over the fate of his son, Amr Ibrahim Metwaly, who disappeared 11 years ago. Meanwhile, the Egyptian authorities continue to refuse to address his case and have refrained from investigating it for the past 12 years, just as they continue to refuse to sign the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.