The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) says it is deeply concerned by news of the ongoing arrests of anti-Iraqi war activists in Egypt. The organisation said that on 19 February 2003 security forces had arrested Kamal Khalil, a leader of the Egyptian anti-war movement and director of the Socialist Studies Centre.

A February 17 appeals court ruling in Egypt may signal an increasingly harsh campaign of entrapment, arrest and conviction of men solely on the basis of alleged consensual homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch says. The organisation has urged the Egyptian authorities to conduct a fair review of all sentences handed down in such cases, and to free from prison anyone convicted solely for private, consensual conduct among adults.

The Egyptian government conducts mass arrest campaigns of children whose "crime" is that they are in need of protection, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.
Children in police custody face beatings, sexual abuse and extortion by police and adult criminal suspects, and police routinely deny them access to food, bedding and medical care.

Egyptian authorities have arrested 15 persons over demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Many of them remain in pre-trial detention with some of them having reportedly been kept in incommunicado detention during this time, says the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). The OMCT requests those concerned by this situation to write to the Egyptian authorities requesting that they be released and their safety guaranteed.

Hundreds of foreigners, including refugees and asylum seekers, were beaten and jailed during two nights of racially-motivated arrests in Cairo, Human Rights Watch says. The threat of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and racially-based harassment continues to hang over many asylum-seekers and refugees in Egypt, says the organisation.