Montasser El-Zayat, a cassation lawyer and president of the Moderation Forum, said that the number of detainees in Egypt since 3 July, the day army generals carried out the coup against the first elected president in the country, reached eight thousand, stressing that they are not all members of the Muslim Brotherhood. On 4 September, security forces arrested Mustafa Sayed Abdul-Samad, treasurer of Salafi Nour Party in Beni Suef.
In a statement on 5 September, Zayat further said: “Judicial, social and political moderation and balance in the state cannot be established until the judicial system guarantees honest defence for the accused, which may include lawyers working on a volunteer basis. Therefore, we have launched the ‘National Committee for the Defence of Detainees and Prisoners of Conscience’ to defend detainees who do not belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, who often have no one to defend them.” Zayat, however, added: “Nevertheless, if any detained Muslim Brotherhood member seeks our help, we will not hesitate to defend him or her, in the belief that every accused has the right to a lawyer to defend them.”