The timing could not be worse: Criminal Court upholds asset freeze for NGOs. The top story on Egypt in the international press this morning is news that the Cairo Criminal Court has upheld a freeze on the assets of five human rights activists on Saturday, including Hossam Bahgat. An asset freeze has also been placed on the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Egyptian Center on the Right to Education. The freeze comes as part of the investigation of foreign funding of NGOs launched in 2011.

The story has been front-page news since yesterday afternoon in the digital edition of the Financial Times, and wire service coverage from Reuters and the Associated Press is getting wide pickup across the political spectrum, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. With President Abdel Fattah El Sisi due this week in New York for UN meetings, we expect human rights issues to be even more pronounced on his agenda. Also likely to come up during the New York trip: Egypt’s new law on construction of churches, which Human Rights Watch argued late last week discriminates against Christians. For an in-depth analysis of the law, see ‘Nothing new under the sun: Egypt’s church construction law’ by Eshhad’s Jay Roddy.