An Egyptian court sentenced Thursday a former member of parliament and others to ten years in prison for smuggling antiquities out of the country, as part of a campaign to stop the trade.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Egyptian police authorities of “mistreating” Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers in December last year and early January. The police arrested 30 Sudanese citizens during that period “arbitrarily”, it is alleged by the rights group.

Police in Egypt have subjected dozens of Sudanese refugees to arbitrary detention and abuse, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday

A group of 50 Eritrean refugees are at imminent risk of deportation from Egypt amid a spike in removals of undocumented migrants, Amnesty International has said on Friday.

The House of Representatives agreed in principle to amend the law on combating illegal immigration issued in 2016, in all its articles.

Senior officials and businesspeople from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates were involved in financial deals that funded the illicit excavation and smuggling of over 200 archeological artifacts, according to court documents from a trial that began this year obtained by Mada Masr.

Egyptian authorities are refusing Eritrean refugees asylum and deported 24 of them last month after holding them in appalling conditions, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Thursday.

Egyptian authorities are deporting Eritreans seeking asylum, including children, without assessing their asylum claims or other protection needs, Human Rights Watch said today.

Egypt’s leader on Tuesday criticised Europe’s handling of the migration crisis and its refusal to receive refugees arriving at its borders, saying his own country has taken in millions of people who left their home countries.

The Egyptian officials have highlighted growing refugee numbers in Egypt. In 2016, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi stated at the G20 summit that Egypt hosts over five million refugees and migrants. Then in 2020, Al-Sisi put the number of Syrian refugees and migrants in Egypt at 500,000.