UK urged to intervene for Birmingham woman arrested in Cairo
Lawyers allege Eman el-Shazly was detained to silence her sister, a prominent critic of the Egyptian government, highlighting the practice of "punishment by proxy."
The UK Foreign Office has been asked to intervene to secure the release of Eman el-Shazly, a 45-year-old British-Egyptian woman from Birmingham who was arrested in Cairo on 16 August. Her lawyers claim she was detained in an attempt to silence her sister, Mona el-Shazly, a critic of the Egyptian government who runs a YouTube channel in the United Kingdom.
Eman, who became a British citizen through marriage, was visiting Egypt to look after her ill mother. She is currently being held in the Ramadan rehabilitation centre. The Foreign Office has confirmed that her case has been assigned the same file number as that of her two brothers, Hassan and Eid, who were previously jailed on charges related to social media and state security.
Arfan Rashid, the lawyer acting for Eman’s husband, Zeesharn Moustapha, stated that Eman had no prior involvement in politics. He noted that Egyptian police and security officers attended the family home a few days before the arrest, demanding that Eman tell her sister to stop publishing material against the government. Rashid argued there is ample evidence that the arrest was intended to silence Mona, who has 130,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and is active on X.
The case underscores a pattern of targeting family members of critics living abroad, a practice the UK government acknowledged as "punishment by proxy" in a country profile policy note published in March 2026. Human Rights Watch and the House of Commons library had warned of this escalating pattern in 2021. Mona, who has lived in the UK for 18 years, has claimed that as many as five family members have been detained or harassed by Egyptian authorities.
Mona’s activism focuses on alleged corruption within the security services and public utilities, a sensitive subject in Egypt. Her brothers, Hassan and Eid, were rearrested in May on charges of promoting the ideas of a terrorist organisation on social media and broadcasting false news harmful to state security. They had previously spent three years in pre-trial detention.
The UK’s Foreign Office representation in Cairo has requested access to see Eman but has not yet received a positive reply. Lawyers have suggested that Alistair Burt, the UK’s new envoy on complex consular cases, should take up the matter. Burt was appointed a month ago and is tasked with securing the release of British citizens held abroad.
