In June, President Sisi praised detentions for “saving Egypt”. SSSP prosecutors and judges routinely renewed pretrial detention orders for thousands of detainees without allowing them to meaningfully challenge the legality of their detention. Detention renewal hearings took place via videoconference with detainees connected from prison, denying them the right to adequate defence and exposing them to reprisals for reporting abuse in front of prison guards. Fair trial guarantees were systematically flouted in political cases. In March, following an unfair trial, an ESSC sentenced 30 people, including the head of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, to between five years’ and life imprisonment on absurd charges stemming from their human rights work or peaceful dissent. ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES AND TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT Security forces, including the National Security Agency (NSA), continued to subject dissidents to enforced disappearance. According to the Stop Enforced Disappearances campaign, at least 70 individuals arrested in 2023 were subjected to enforced disappearance, with the fate and whereabouts of six remaining unknown. Torture and other ill-treatment remained routine in prisons, police stations and NSArun facilities. In January, security forces arrested lawyer Shaaban Mohamed on a street in Giza and subjected him to enforced disappearance in an NSA facility for six weeks, during which he was beaten, suspended and given electric shocks. Prisoners continued to be held in conditions violating the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, including through deliberate denial of healthcare, prolonged solitary confinement, bombardment with bright lights, camera surveillance around the clock, and denial of family visits.4 Dozens of prisoners held in the Badr prison complex in Cairo governorate and the 10th of Ramadan The State of the World’s Human Rights prison in Sharqia governorate, to which hundreds of political prisoners were transferred from mid-2022 and mid-2023, respectively, staged hunger strikes in protest at detention conditions. DEATH PENALTY Criminal courts, including terrorism-circuits, and military courts imposed death sentences after unfair trials. In January, a Cairo criminal court sentenced people to death for terrorism-related offences following a trial marred by allegations of enforced disappearance and “confessions” extracted under torture. The number of executions carried out declined from previous years. IMPUNITY Impunity prevailed for unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearance and other grave human rights violations committed in 2023 and previous years. Ten years on, no official had been held accountable for the unlawful killings of at least 900 people during violent dispersals of sit-ins by supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi on 14 August 2013.5 Authorities failed to investigate adequately the causes and circumstances of at least 47 deaths in custody following reports of torture or denial of healthcare. Security forces threatened relatives seeking truth and justice with arbitrary detention and other harm. No officials were held accountable for the death of Mahmoud Abdel Gawad in July in Nabaroh police station, Dakahlia governorate, four days after his arrest, amid credible reports that police beat him severely and gave him electric shocks. No investigations were opened into the death of lawyer Ali Abbas Barakat on 26 June, who had liver disease. He collapsed and lost consciousness on 10 June in alQanater prison in Greater Cairo, but the authorities waited 48 hours before transferring him to a prison hospital. In September, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that the trial in their absence of four Egyptian officers accused of the torture 157