CAIRO — An Egyptian court dealt a heavy blow to the country’s human rights activists on Saturday by freezing the assets of five prominent human rights defenders and three nongovernmental organizations.
The freeze is part of a criminal investigation into the funding and work of prominent activists, including Hossam Bahgat and Gamal Eid, and advocacy groups, like the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, which document state abuses.
The human rights defenders are accused of using money acquired illegally from foreign governments to spread lies and harm national security. The charges can result in a sentence of life in prison.
“We don’t regret what we did, and we won’t be silenced,” Mr. Bahgat, who was briefly detained by the military last year and now works as a journalist, told reporters outside the courtroom. “This order was expected, although we fought it.”
Successive Egyptian governments have tried to silence their critics, but matters have grown worse for activists under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mr. Sisi, a former general, rose to power after overthrowing his popularly-elected Islamist predecessor, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013.
Mr. Sisi’s crackdown, which at first singled out Islamist youths, is now mostly aimed at the liberal groups that spearheaded the country’s 2011 uprising, which forced Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s longtime authoritarian leader, to step down. Thousands have been thrown in jails, and hundreds have been barred from travel since.
Mr. Sisi is scheduled to travel to New York in this week for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, and the timing of the court ruling underscored his determination to pursue his authoritarian crackdown in defiance of growing international condemnation.
Mr. Sisi planned to meet at the United Nations with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president. The secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, denounced the detention of Mr. Bahgat last year.
“Today’s asset freeze is huge blow to civil society,” Heba Morayef, a prominent human rights defender in Egypt, wrote on Twitter soon after the verdict. She called for solidarity with Egyptian human rights groups.
But Saturday’s court order may spell the end for many groups.
“These organizations won’t be able to pay rent or salaries,” Mr. Bahgat said. He called the move “a clever way of forcing them to shut down without having to order their closure and deal with a scandal.”
Mr. Eid, one of those whose assets were frozen Saturday, said he did not know what would happen to his organization, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, or Anhri.
“If they decide to consider Anhri as my personal property, for example, then they can freeze its accounts,” Mr. Eid said. The same would apply to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, or EIPR, which Mr. Bahgat founded.
“They didn’t say anything yet,” Mr. Eid said. “We will just have to wait and see what they will decide.”
Judges, not prosecutors, are carrying out the investigation into these organizations, which highlights the importance of the case to the Egyptian authorities. The asset freeze was ordered by judges in March, but needed court approval before taking effect. The procedures’ slow pace is typical for high-profile political cases in Egypt.
The investigative judges have not presented the defendants with evidence, and some defendants had not yet been summoned for questioning.
“We have not been shown anything to argue against yet,” Mr. Eid said. “All we heard was just the thoughts of this one national security officer, who has not even attended any of these sessions.”
The closest thing to evidence submitted until now was a reference to a police report that said the authorities had taken 107 screen shots of statements by one of the accused groups, defendants say.
“We didn’t even get to see the screen shots,” Mr. Bahgat said. “That’s all they have. Some statements we put out and our bank records.”
Most of the accused organizations do not deny receiving foreign funds and insist that their transactions have always open to state audits.
“Nobody is trying to deny it,” Ms. Morayef said in an interview. “The organizations’ position is that they have the right to receive foreign funding.”
Saturday’s rulingwas widely seen a precursor to more severe measures.
Mr. Bahgat, the best- known defendant in the case, said he had been collecting advice for how to survive Egyptian prison.
“I have been trying to find out how many cigarettes I should pay for things. I don’t want to be taken advantage of,” he said with a laugh. “It will be our version of ‘Orange Is the New Black.’”