Egypt has been the subject of two confidential inquiries by the Committee against Torture, the only procedure the Committee can open against it. Two international bodies have separately held that a European state breached the prohibition on return by sending a man to Egypt on the strength of Egyptian diplomatic assurances. Six matters in the Coalition’s register concern Egyptian nationals, and in three of them the petitioner is a Coptic Christian who already held protection granted by a United States immigration judge.
Why this page exists
Egypt does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project and has no arrangement with the United States to receive people who are not its nationals. It is here because it is a country people in the register hold protection against, and because the international record on what an Egyptian diplomatic assurance is worth is unusually direct.
What Egypt has accepted, and what it has not
Egypt acceded to the Convention against Torture on 25 June 1986, with no reservations of any kind. It has made no declaration under article 21 or article 22, so the Committee against Torture cannot receive a complaint about Egypt from another state or from an individual.
It did not opt out of article 20, and that omission is the whole of what follows. Article 20 allows the Committee to open a confidential inquiry of its own motion where it receives reliable indications of systematic torture. It is the only route the Committee has into Egypt, and it has used it twice.
Egypt ratified the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 14 January 1982, with a declaration referring to Islamic Sharia. It is not a party to the Optional Protocol to that Covenant, to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, or to the Convention on Enforced Disappearance.
No United Nations treaty body can receive an individual complaint about Egypt. The Coalition checked all eight complaint mechanisms in the United Nations system. Egypt has joined none of them, and made no declaration under article 14 of the Racial Discrimination Convention.
One regional route is open. Egypt ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights in March 1984. It signed the protocol establishing the African Court in 1999 but never ratified it, and has made no declaration accepting that Court’s jurisdiction over individual cases. The African Commission, by contrast, may receive communications from any person against any state party to the Charter, with no further declaration needed. That is the one individual forum with competence over Egypt.
What United Nations bodies have found
The first inquiry, 1991 to 1996. The Committee adopted its summary account on 7 May 1996 and published it in its annual report. The United Nations announced the outcome in its own press release of 13 May 1996: the Committee concluded that torture “was systematically practised by the security forces”, in particular by State Security Intelligence, despite the Government’s denials. Egypt declined the visit the Committee requested.
The second inquiry, 2012 to 2015. The Committee adopted a further report, CAT/C/56/R.6 of 6 January 2016, and published its summary account in 2017. That report is a restricted document and the Coalition has not obtained it. A conclusion widely attributed to it circulates in quotation marks; the Coalition has been unable to verify the wording against the United Nations text and does not reproduce it here.
The most recent review, 2023. The Committee adopted concluding observations on Egypt on 12 December 2023, its first review of Egypt in twenty-one years. In the account the United Nations human rights office published of the adopted observations, the Committee expressed deep concern at the systematic use of torture and ill-treatment by police, prison guards, other security forces and the military, in police stations, prisons, state security detention centres, military bases and unofficial places of detention, mainly against political opponents and government critics, and at a lack of accountability amounting to a climate of impunity. The Coalition quotes the published account rather than the paragraph text of the observations, which it could not retrieve.
Special procedures, most recently. On 15 September 2025 eight mandate holders, including the Special Rapporteur on torture, jointly transmitted allegations concerning fifteen named men, describing arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment in detention, and denial of due process and a fair trial. These are allegations transmitted to a government, not findings.
What an Egyptian assurance has been worth
This is the part of the Egyptian record that bears most directly on the rest of this site.
In Agiza v. Sweden, decided on 20 May 2005, the Committee against Torture found that Sweden had breached article 3 by expelling a man to Egypt. It held that Sweden knew or should have known that Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against detainees, that the risk was particularly high for those held on political and security grounds, and that the diplomatic assurances obtained, which carried no enforcement mechanism, did not suffice against that risk.
In Alzery v. Sweden, views adopted on 25 October 2006, the Human Rights Committee reached the same conclusion under article 7 of the Covenant on the second man removed on the same flight. Sweden had not shown the assurances sufficient to eliminate the risk of ill-treatment.
Both findings are against Sweden, not Egypt, and they were possible only because Sweden had accepted the complaint procedures that Egypt has not. They are authoritative on the risk of torture in Egypt and on what an Egyptian assurance is worth, and they cannot be answered by Egypt in any forum.
Coptic Christians
Three of the six matters in the register concern a Coptic Christian. Two judicial bodies have examined the question and reached the same structure, and the structure matters more than the conclusion.
In M.E. v. France, judgment of 6 June 2013, the European Court of Human Rights held that no generalised risk to all Copts could be established on the information before it, and in the same judgment held that this particular applicant, a convicted proselytiser actively sought by police in Assiout, faced a real risk of treatment contrary to article 3 if returned. It noted that the failure of the police to act on complaints by Coptic Christians raised serious doubt about whether he could receive adequate protection.
The United Kingdom’s Upper Tribunal reached the same shape in country guidance of 3 December 2013: inadequate state protection of Coptic Christians throughout, no general risk of article 3 treatment, and a real risk in defined circumstances, including for converts, those involved in church construction or repair after an attack, and those seriously accused of proselytising. The Coalition has not established whether that guidance remains current in 2026. Investigating.
The point for a reader is the one this whole project turns on. Neither body held that being Coptic is enough. Both held that a person’s own profile decides it.
What independent organisations have documented
Human Rights Watch records in its 2026 annual chapter that security forces continued to subject people under investigation to forcible disappearance in places of detention where they faced torture and ill-treatment, and reports that 44 detainees had died in custody by September 2025. That count is attributed by Human Rights Watch to a third organisation, the Committee for Justice, and not to its own monitoring. Amnesty International records for the same period that torture and ill-treatment remained routine in prisons, police stations and facilities run by the National Security Agency, and gives three specific custodial deaths following reports of torture or denial of healthcare.
These two counts are not the same measure and the Coalition does not reconcile them. Both are documentation by named organisations. Neither is a finding by a body with jurisdiction.
What is not established
The wording of the Committee’s 2016 inquiry conclusion. The report is restricted and the Coalition has not read it. Investigating.
The paragraph text of the 2023 concluding observations, which the Coalition could not retrieve from the United Nations document system. What appears above is the published account of them.
Whether the United Kingdom country guidance on Coptic Christians remains current. Investigating.
Whether the two custodial death counts above describe the same events. They do not use the same measure and neither organisation reconciles them.
The decisions on this site
Khouzam v. Hogan, M.D. Pa., 15 June 2007, 10 January 2008, and Khouzam v. Attorney General, 3d Cir., 5 December 2008. A Coptic Christian holding a deferral of removal under the Convention against Torture, granted because it was more likely than not that he would be tortured if returned, who was found to have made a credible showing that Egyptian law enforcement had already tortured him before he fled.
Elshourbagy v. Bondi, W.D. Wash., 23 December 2025.
Saadhom v. Bondi, W.D. Wash., 12 March 2026.
Ali v. Barlow, E.D. Va., 28 August 2006. Relief refused.
Sources
Treaty status, from the depositary. Convention against Torture, for the accession of 25 June 1986 and the absence of any article 21 or article 22 declaration. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. African Charter ratification table.
United Nations bodies. United Nations press release HR/4297, 13 May 1996, on the first inquiry. CAT/C/56/R.6, 6 January 2016, the second inquiry report, restricted. CAT/C/EGY/CO/5, 12 December 2023. AL EGY 5/2025, 15 September 2025.
On diplomatic assurances. Agiza v. Sweden, CAT/C/34/D/233/2003, 20 May 2005. Alzery v. Sweden, CCPR/C/88/D/1416/2005, views adopted 25 October 2006.
On Coptic Christians. M.E. c. France, no. 50094/10, European Court of Human Rights, 6 June 2013. MS (Coptic Christians) Egypt CG [2013] UKUT 00611 (IAC), 3 December 2013.
Independent organisations. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Egypt chapter, 4 February 2026. Amnesty International, Report 2025/26, Egypt.
Compiled 13 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read rather than relied on through the summary.