CAIRO — If human rights defender Nancy Okail were to return to Cairo today to visit her twin toddlers, she would be imprisoned.

The former director for Freedom House in Egypt, Okail fled to Washington last year when it became clear that trumped-up charges against her and 42 other nongovernmental organization workers were sticking. A high-profile raid of their offices in the last days of 2011 by the then military government was followed by indictments accusing staff of working for unlicensed institutions and receiving illegal funds.

This year, again under military rule, all were found guilty. Okail was the only Egyptian sentenced to five years in prison in absentia. She can only challenge the sentence if she returns to Egypt and appeals it from prison, she said.

This month, as news broke of a raid of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights office in Cairo that later led to the imprisonment of activist Mohamed Adel, Okail tweeted that she had to check the article several times “to make sure that we are not in December 2010.” As the year ends, she and other experts are comparing the Egypt of today to pre-revolution Egypt, as civil society activists and Islamists alike are facing the same crackdowns and treatment seen under the 30-year rule of toppled President Hosni Mubarak.