Christian Solidarity Worldwide has said that plainclothes police officers arrested Mina Thabet, from the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) in the middle of Thursday night.
Mina Thabet is the Minority Rights Program Director for ECRF and was charged with belonging to a terrorist group, inciting violence and public assembly, spreading fabricated information for terrorist purposes, inciting attacks on police stations, and possession of leaflets undermining national security and the ruling regime.
Mr Thabet's work included defending Egypt's Coptic community, which makes up around a tenth of the mainly Muslim population.
He worked on the case of four Coptic Christian students from El Minya province in Egypt, who were convicted of blasphemy in February after creating a mock video of Islamic extremists beheading hostages.
Three of the students were sentenced to five years in prison while a fourth was sentenced to an indefinite period in juvenile detention. Their teacher, who was also involved in making the video, was sentenced to three years in prison for "insulting Islam".
The human rights activist (pictured, below) is one of several ECRF staff to have been detained in the last year.
The organisation's Executive Director Mohamed Lofty was detained and had his passport confiscated in Cairo airport in June 2015 as he attempted to travel to Germany, while the President of the Board Ahmed Abdallah was arrested at his home in April and faces the same charges as Mina Thabet.
Mervyn Thomas, Chief Executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), said: "We are deeply concerned by the arrest of Mina Thabet and the worrying crackdown on civil society and human rights defenders.
"Egypt undoubtedly faces an unprecedented terrorist threat that sometimes necessitates extraordinary measures; however human rights defenders ought to be viewed as allies in the effort to create a just and equitable society and accountable governance.
"Mr Thabet and the ECRF perform invaluable work in highlighting the difficulties encountered by minority groups and assisting victims of violations to seek redress.
"We urge the authorities to ensure that he receives due process and it is our hope that the exaggerated charges filed against him are dropped.
"We further call upon the Egyptian authorities to adhere to the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which Egypt supported in 1998, which says that States should guarantee the rights of individuals, including in association with others, to promote and protect fundamental freedoms, which is what Mr Thabet and his colleagues are doing."
