EGYPT: Travel Ban For Dissidents

At least six activists, lawyers and journalists have been prevented from leaving Egypt in one week.

Rights groups say 217 people were banned from travel between June 2014 and September 2016 and some have had their personal assets frozen. 115 of them were critics of the government.

Libya sank into lawlessness and divisions after the downfall of the longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The activists say the restrictions are part of a wider move by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to silence opponents and erase freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

The rash of travel bans have prompted a rebuke from the United Nations who said they were part of an effort to silence critics.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry says police do not stop anyone from travel unless a court or prosecutor has ordered it and denies reports of a crackdown.