Egypt drops decade-old charges against NGOs
An Egyptian investigative judge recently dropped charges against 20 NGOs involved in the 2011 foreign funding case that has raised global condemnation, in a move seen as a gesture of goodwill to the United States in order to unfreeze military aid.
![Protesters are pictured during a global solidarity demonstration for political change in Egypt in Trafalgar square, London, United Kingdom, Feb. 12, 2011. The event was organized by Amnesty international and the ITUC, Human Rights Watch, the NUS, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network and the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists.](/sites/default/files/styles/article_hero_medium/public/2021-04/GettyImages-154501920.jpg?h=a5ae579a&itok=xZuEGBwk)
Judicial authorities in Egypt recently dropped charges against 20 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the 2011 case, known as the “foreign funding” case, a few months following a similar decision in December 2020 to conclude investigations with another 20 NGOs in the same case.
The decision of the investigating judge, Ali Mokhtar, on March 30 settled the investigation for lack of grounds for a criminal case or insufficient evidence.