bailed Amro Badr on 28 August and Mahmoud al-Saqqa on 1 October. On 19 November, a court sentenced Syndicate head Yahia Galash and board members Khaled Elbalshy and Gamal Abd el-Reheem to two years in prison on charges that included “harbouring suspects”. The court set a fee of 10,000 Egyptian Pounds (US$630) to suspend the sentences. Investigative judges stepped up a criminal investigation into the activities and funding of NGOs, questioning staff, banning 12 defenders from travelling and freezing the assets of seven defenders and six groups. The authorities ordered the closure of one human rights organization. Parliament approved new legislation to replace the Law on Associations (Law 84 of 2002) which would severely restrict NGOs’ activities and their right to obtain legal registration and access to funding from abroad. The draft law had not been enacted by the end of the year. On 17 February, officials from the Ministry of Health served El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence with a closure order. The organization continued to operate and challenged the government’s decision before the courts, but the authorities briefly froze its assets in November. On 17 September, a court in Cairo upheld an asset freeze against five human rights defenders and three organizations – the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Egyptian Center for the Right to Education – which had been ordered by judges investigating their activities and funding. The security forces used tear gas to disperse peaceful protests in Cairo on 15 and 25 April and arrested around 1,300 people on charges of breaching the Protest Law (Law 107 of 2013) and the Law on Assembly (Law 10 of 1914). On 8 June the government announced that it planned to amend the Protest Law; it had not submitted any drafts to parliament by the end of the year. On 3 December the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that an article of the Protest Law was unconstitutional. The Amnesty International Report 2016/17 article gave the Ministry of the Interior powers to ban protests arbitrarily. EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE Police officers continued to use excessive lethal force following verbal altercations, shooting and killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 40 others. Courts jailed two police officers for 25 years in separate cases of fatal shootings which had led to neighbourhood protests. The Ministry of the Interior repeatedly announced that security forces had shot dead suspects during raids on residences, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood and alleged members of armed groups. No police officers were formally investigated, raising concern that security forces may have used excessive force or in some cases carried out extrajudicial executions. ARBITRARY ARRESTS AND DETENTIONS Critics and opponents of the government continued to face arbitrary arrest and detention on charges that included inciting protests, “terrorism” and belonging to banned groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the 6 April Youth Movement. The authorities also arbitrarily detained several human rights defenders. The security forces arrested around 1,300 people across Egypt between mid-April and early May in attempts to quell protests, according to estimates by a coalition of Egyptian human rights lawyers. Most were released, but some subsequently faced trial (see below, “Unfair trials”). More than 1,400 individuals were held beyond the two-year legal limit for pre-trial detention without being referred to trial. Mahmoud Mohamed Ahmed Hussein was released on bail on 25 March by court order after more than two years’ detention without trial for wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Nation without Torture” and a scarf bearing the “25 January Revolution” logo. Malek Adly, a director at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, was arrested by security forces on 5 May on 147