The North Cairo Criminal Court ordered on Saturday that the assets of five human rights activists and non-governmental organisation (NGO) members, including renowned journalist Hossam Bahgat and lawyer Gamal Eid, be frozen in connection with reopening the "NGOs foreign funding" case of 2011. The court ordered that the assets of Eid and Bahgat, as well as the other defendants', be frozen, but did not order for their families' assets to be frozen. The request was submitted early in January by the investigative judge against 13 defendants and five NGOs, but the court accepted the request only against five members and three NGOs. Out of the 13, seven defendants were family members. The other three members are the head of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Bahey el-din Hassan the director of Hisham Mubarak Law Centre Mostafa Al-Hassan, and the director of the Egyptian Centre for the Right to Education Abdel Hafiz Tayel. The court also ordered that the assets of the aforementioned three NGOs be frozen. The "NGOs' foreign funding" case dates back to December 2011 when prosecutors, backed by the police, stormed the offices of 17 local and international NGOs, including the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House. The NGOs were being investigated for allegedly receiving illegal foreign funding.
