CAIRO — Egyptian authorities say they recently closed a Cairo nongovernmental organization because it violated the law, but leaders of Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture beg to differ.

Egyptian security forces shut down the center Feb. 9 based on a Ministry of Health and Population order that said the center violated licensing conditions. The dispute seems to involve the center's mission. The government said the center is supposed to focus on medical treatments but has branched out into monitoring human rights abuses.

Al-Nadeem Center officials say it was founded in 1993 to document human rights abuses, rehabilitate torture victims, provide psychological counseling to victims of violence and look into torture complaints. They say the closing is political and an attempt to silence reports of abuses. The day Al-Nadeem Center closed, it issued a report indicating it had monitored “535 individual torture cases, 307 collective torture or maltreatment cases, 472 cases of medical neglect in detention centers and 123 deaths in detention centers" in 2016.

This is not the first time the government has obstructed the center's work. A year ago, security forces shut down the center’s clinic also for allegedly violating licensing conditions.