Mona Seif

Seif grew up in a family of activists, and politics was a constant topic of discussion during her childhood. Her father, Ahmed Seif, who died in 2014, was a human rights attorney and opposition leader who spent five years in prison during the Mubarak regime. During his detention, he was tortured. Her mother, Laila Soueif, is also an activist and a mathematics professor. She helped organize demonstrations against the Mubarak regime over the decades before his downfall. Her mother is "known on the streets as brash and courageous, and has on numerous occasions faced down baton-wielding policemen with nothing but her scolding, scathing, booming voice and steely eyes".

When it was announced in April 2013 that Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders presented by Human Rights Watch, both she and HRW were criticised for what some considered taking a firm pro-Palestinian stance. The specific accusations, made by the pro-Zionist UN WATCH were that she tweeted support for violence in the form of attacks on the Egypt-Israel-Jordan gas pipeline; invasion of the Israeli embassy in Cairo and missile attacks on Israel. The accusations were examined and dismissed in detail by Scott Long, who denied the 3 tweets, of 93,000 examined, showed any evidence whatsoever of support for violence.

In 2012, she was a finalist for the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, which ultimately went to Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi.

Mona Seif (Egyptian Arabic: منى سيف ‎, IPA: [ˈmonæ ˈseːf] ) is an Egyptian human rights activist known for her participation in dissident movements during and after the 2011 Egyptian revolution, for her creative use of social media in campaigns, and for her work to end military trials for civilian protesters. She is a biology graduate student, investigating the BRCA1 breast cancer gene.

Seif estimates that military courts have sentenced 7,000 civilians since former Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February, 2011. She notes that there has been a shift in the SCAF's approach since March and that protesters are now getting suspended sentences rather than the 3-5-year sentences they were previously getting. She speculates that this may be an attempt to stop the regular marches and may also be due to the pressure applied by international human right groups.

Seif's brother Alaa Abd El-Fattah co-created the Egyptian blog aggregator Manalaa and in 2005 began to document abuses by the Mubarak regime. Alaa was arrested at a demonstration in 2006 and imprisoned for 45 days, during which Mona and his wife Manal helped organize an online campaign to free him. Seif's younger sister, Sanaa Seif, has also been an opposition activist and protester.