Law and Democracy Support Foundation condemns the continued detention and prosecution of translator Marwa Arafa, and demands her immediate and unconditional release. The Foundation holds the Egyptian authorities fully responsible for her safety and the safety of her daughter, due to the deprivation of their right to family life.
On 20 April 2020, security forces raided Marwa Arafa’s home and arrested her in front of her infant daughter, who was only one year and eight months old at the time. Marwa was subjected to enforced disappearance for 14 days before appearing before the Supreme State Security Prosecution on 4 May 2020. She was charged in Case No. 570 of 2020 (Supreme State Security) with spreading false news, misuse of social media, and participating in and promoting a terrorist group’s activities.
Since then, Marwa has been held in pre-trial detention for years, in flagrant violation of the Egyptian Constitution and Egypt’s international obligations, foremost among them the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Despite exceeding the legal limit for pre-trial detention, instead of being released, she was referred to trial in January 2025, in a continued pattern of retaliation against opinion-holders and human rights defenders.
It is worth noting that Marwa Arafa is the mother of a daughter named Wafaa, who is now six years old and has been deprived of her mother throughout her early childhood, due to unfair procedures that violate the fundamental rights of both mother and child, in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Egypt has ratified.
Marwa’s case is not an isolated incident but part of a broader, systematic pattern of targeting opinion-holders and human rights defenders through repressive tools such as prolonged pre-trial detention and politically motivated trials.
Accordingly, Law and Democracy Support Foundation stresses the need for the immediate and unconditional release of translator Marwa Arafa, the dropping of all charges against her, and her reunification with her daughter without any restrictions. The Foundation also calls for an end to politically motivated trials and the use of pre-trial detention as a tool of collective punishment against human rights defenders.
The Foundation calls on the international community, including UN human rights mechanisms, to urgently intervene to demand that the Egyptian authorities end these violations. It also calls for accountability for the psychological and social harm caused to Marwa Arafa and her daughter as a result of the ongoing violations.
