An Egyptian activist who is under criminal investigation for his human rights work and is banned from travelling abroad has won an international rights award, organizers said on Tuesday.
Mohamed Zaree, 37, the Egypt office director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, won the Martin Ennals Award, a prize given each year by a jury of 10 global rights groups.
He was unable to travel to Geneva to pick up the award at a ceremony on Tuesday as he has been banned from travel since May 2016 and faces charges that could carry a life in prison sentence for "receiving funds from foreign entities to harm national security".
Mohamed Zaree is a devoted human rights activist and legal scholar whose work focuses on human rights advocacy around freedom of expression and association, the awards jury said.
Within the context of the renewed crackdown on Egyptian human rights organizations, he has become a leading figure in Egypt’s human rights movement.
Egyptian rights activists accuse President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of erasing freedoms won in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ended Hosni Mubaraks 30-year rule.
Last year authorities reopened an investigation into non-governmental organizations that document abuses, which the government accuses of receiving foreign funding to spread chaos.
Government pressure forced the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies to relocate its headquarters to Tunisia in 2014.
The runners-up for the Martin Ennals Award were Karla Avelar, who founded El Salvador's first organization of transgender women, and FreeThe5KH, five Cambodian human rights activists who were recently released. The award's first recipient in 1994 was Chinese dissident Harry Wu.