for voluntary recruitment into the armed forces. From 9 October, Israel repeatedly attacked the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza and severely restricted entry of humanitarian aid from Egypt into besieged Gaza. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, ASSOCIATION AND ASSEMBLY The authorities continued to crush dissent and stifle civil society. Among those targeted were opposition politicians and their supporters, relatives of dissidents abroad, trade unionists, lawyers, and people critical of the authorities’ human rights record and their handling of the economic crisis and the military’s role. In January, after a grossly unfair trial, an Emergency Supreme State Security Court (ESSC) sentenced 82 people from Suez, including 23 who were children at the time of the alleged offences, to between five years’ and life imprisonment in connection to antigovernment protests in September 2019.1 Security forces arrested at least four journalists for their work or opinions. They included Hisham Kassem, a publisher and president of the Free Current Movement, a coalition of opposition liberal parties, who was sentenced in September to six months’ imprisonment and a fine on charges of “defamation” for his online criticism of a former government minister’s alleged corruption and of “insulting” public officials.2 At least 21 journalists remained in jail after being convicted or pending investigations into charges of “spreading false news”, belonging to a “terrorist” group or “misuse of social media”. Over 600 news, human rights and other websites continued to be blocked. The authorities blocked the website of the NGO Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies in January, and the news sites of Soulta 4 and Masr 360 in June, but unblocked opposition news website Daarb in April. Staff at Mada Masr, an independent media platform, faced politically motivated prosecutions and investigations, including in 156 relation to its publication in October of an investigative report on the Rafah border crossing. Human rights defenders, trade unionists and journalists were among 820 people added to the government’s “list of terrorists” throughout the year without due process, depriving them of civic and political rights. In April, the deadline for registration under the draconian 2019 NGO Law came into force, putting unregistered NGOs at risk of closure.3 Arbitrary travel bans and/or asset freezes remained in place against at least 20 human rights defenders in connection to their work. Security forces blocked people from registering their endorsements for prospective opposition candidates for presidential elections and arbitrarily arrested at least 137 supporters and relatives of opposition politician and aspiring presidential candidate Ahmed Altantawy. In September, Citizen Lab confirmed that Ahmed Altantawy’s phone was infected with Predator spyware, assessing with “high confidence” the government’s involvement. In October, security forces in the cities of Cairo and Alexandria arrested dozens of people, including children, for protesting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. At least 67 remained in pretrial detention over protest and terrorism-related charges at the end of the year, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. ARBITRARY DETENTION AND UNFAIR TRIALS During the year, 834 prisoners held for political reasons were released, while the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) interrogated at least 2,504 suspected critics or opponents arrested in 2023 on accusations of involvement in terrorismrelated crimes, cybercrimes, protests and spreading “false news”. Security forces refused to release 251 detainees who had been acquitted or provisionally released by prosecutors or judges, or had completed their prison sentences. The State of the World’s Human Rights