A growing international outcry has emerged over the detention of a British-Egyptian mother in Egypt, with her legal team confirming the arrest is a politically motivated tactic to silence her dissident sister living abroad. Forty-five-year-old Eman el-Shazly, a resident of Birmingham with four children, was taken into custody by Egyptian security forces on August 16 during a routine visit to the country.
According to her legal representation, the arrest was not carried out over any alleged wrongdoing by Eman herself. Instead, authorities targeted her to pressure her sibling, Mona el-Shazly, a UK-based government critic who has spent years speaking out against corruption under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s administration. Mona operates a popular YouTube channel with more than 130,000 subscribers and maintains an active presence on X, where much of her commentary focuses on systemic corruption within Egypt’s security apparatus and public utility sectors—two areas where the country’s powerful, opaque military holds extensive commercial stakes.
This pattern of targeting relatives of dissidents is not an isolated incident for the el-Shazly family. Eman’s two brothers, Hassan and Eid, were already held in pretrial detention for nearly three years on charges commonly leveled against opponents of the Sisi regime: spreading false information that threatens state security and promoting ideologies linked to terrorist groups on social media. The pair were rearrested by Egyptian authorities just this past May, and Eman has now been formally added to the same legal case that holds her brothers.
At the time of her arrest, Eman had been in Egypt for roughly two months, staying to care for her elderly, ailing mother. Two days after her detainment, Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution ruled to extend her pretrial detention for 15 days as investigations proceed. She now faces the threat of long-term confinement in Egypt’s widely criticized prison system, where international human rights organizations have documented consistent abuses including systemic torture, deliberate medical neglect, and degrading inhumane treatment.
The Sisi government has a well-documented history of targeting family members of exiled and overseas-based critics, using detained relatives as leverage to silence dissent beyond Egypt’s borders. Despite pressure from her family to step back from her activism and remove her critical videos, Mona el-Shazly has refused to back down. Speaking to The Guardian, she emphasized that she has broken no laws and committed no transgressions, noting that the situation has already left 11 children in the family without parental care. “It is a horrible situation, but the Egyptian government will not stop if I appear weak. The government is close to collapsing,” she stated.
Back in the UK, Eman’s husband Zeesharn Moustapha has launched a public fundraising campaign to cover the family’s rapidly rising legal fees as they fight to secure her release. Moustapha said the entire family remains “deeply concerned about her safety and wellbeing” amid the lack of regular access to Eman.
Earlier this year, the British government publicly acknowledged that the Sisi regime regularly engages in what it calls “punishment by proxy,” targeting the relatives of overseas-based critics to silence opposition. Human Rights Watch has also confirmed that the regime has increasingly ramped up this tactic of intimidating dissidents through their family members. British diplomatic officials have formally requested consular access to Eman, a standard right under international diplomatic conventions, but Egyptian authorities have not yet granted the request.