Egypt | Pakistan

Egyptian authorities have detained more than 200 pro-Palestinian activists in Cairo ahead of an international march with the stated aim of breaking Israel’s blockade on Gaza, organisers said Thursday. As part of the Global March to Gaza, thousands of activists planned to travel to Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with the Palestinian territory on Friday to demand the entry of humanitarian aid. On Thursday, the march’s spokesperson Saif Abukeshek told AFP: “Over 200 participants were detained at Cairo airport or questioned at hotels across Cairo.” He added that those detained included nationals from the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Morocco, and Algeria. Abukeshek said that plainclothes police entered hotels in Cairo on Wednesday with lists of names, questioned activists and in some cases confiscated mobile phones and searched personal belongings. “After interrogations, some were arrested and others were released,” he added. At Cairo airport, some detainees were held for long hours wit...

Egypt and Greece sought to ease tensions over the historic St Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai peninsula on Friday after a controversial court ruling said it sat on state-owned land. Cairo has denied that the ruling threatens the UNESCO World Heritage landmark after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status. St Catherine’s monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery. A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property”. But on Friday, in a phone call with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Cairo was “fully committed to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery, and ensuring it is not violated”. The Gree...

Egypt has handed opposition figure and former presidential hopeful Hisham Kassem a new six-month prison sentence for defaming a former minister, his lawyer told AFP on Thursday. Kassem was released in February 2024 after serving a six-month sentence that effectively stopped him from contesting a December 2023 presidential election. The new sentence was issued in absentia on Wednesday because Kassem is out of the country, his lawyer Nasser Amin told AFP. Kassem had not been notified of the new charges against him, Amin said, adding: “These measures have been very concerning.” The European Parliament described Kassem’s original prosecution in September 2023 as “politically motivated”. His latest conviction was on charges of defaming another former labour minister, apparently in the same comments as the first. Human rights group the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights condemned the ruling, describing it as “continued judicial persecution for political purposes”. “Retrying Kassem for the same incident and on ...