Fessehaye Yohannes Johannes

Co-founder of the newspaper Setit, Yohannes was arrested in a sweeping crackdown on print media following the September 11 attacks and has been detained incommunicado since, drawing grave concern… More

Idris Mohammed Ali

Popular Tigrinya-language singer/songwriter Idris Mohamed Ali was arrested and detained without charge in November 2005. He has been held incommunicado since; rumors of his death have circulated online but… More

Idris Said Abu’Are

Freelance journalist and author of short fiction Idris Said was arrested in October 2001, after questioning the arrests en masse of his colleagues following the September 11 attacks. Since… More

Writers at Risk Database

Berhane Abrehe

A former top government official, Abrehe was arrested in September 2018, barely a week after he published a book criticizing Eritrea's autocracy. Abrehe's continued detention calls into question Eritrea's… More

Hesham Gaafar

Hesham Gaafar

Gaafar was detained without warrant in October 2015 for suspected involvement with the banned Muslim Brotherhood. He was held for 41 months in pretrial detention, often under prolonged solitary… More

Abdel-Rahman Mekled

Mekled was arrested in August 2017 as part of a group of journalists and writers who had criticized the Egyptian government's decision to renounce its claim on several Red… More

Writers at Risk Database

Abdel-Halim Qandil

A prolific journalist whose work has been censored many times in the past decade, Qandil was jailed in December 2017 for comments he made in a TV interview criticizing… More

Karam Saber

Karam Saber

In June 2013, author and land rights activist Saber was sentenced to 5 years in prison for “contempt of religion” in connection with his 2010 collection of short stories,… More

Medhat Safwat

Sawfat, who has written critically about fundamentalist groups’ strict interpretation of Islam, has faced verbal abuse and intimidation after each piece he has written. He was also formally admonished… More

Writers at Risk Database

Kareem Amer

Known for the secular views expressed on his blog, Amer was sentenced to four years in prison for disparaging Islam and defaming the president in 2007. Upon his scheduled… More