(MENAFN- The Peninsula) AFP
Cairo: Eighteen people, mostly women, were arrested in Cairo during a solidarity rally for women in war-torn Gaza and Sudan at the UN Women agency headquarters, a lawyer said Wednesday.
"I am currently before the state security prosecutor's office... the people arrested yesterday are journalists, lawyers and students," said human rights lawyer Khaled Ali in a Facebook post.
Prominent activist Lobna Darwish of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) was among those detained at Tuesday's protest, along with rights lawyers Ragia Omran and Mahienour el-Massry, he said.
The lawyer said people "who happened to pass by in proximity to the gathering" had also been arrested.
Hossam Bahgat, a leading Egyptian rights defender and founder of the EIPR, said Darwish had been "arrested during a demonstration of women in solidarity with Palestine and Sudan".
The Civil Democratic Movement, a coalition of 12 opposition political parties, condemned the arrests, saying those detained had been holding "a peaceful rally... to demand an end to the war in Gaza".
"The demonstration was violently dispersed, and the activists were taken to an unknown location," the alliance said on Facebook, citing witnesses.
The movement and the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms demanded the "immediate release" of those detained.
Public protests have generally been banned in Egypt since 2013.
In April 2022, a presidential pardon committee was formed that released nearly 1,000 prisoners of conscience over the course of a year, but rights organisations say three times as many people were arrested over the same period.
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