The relatives of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak have failed in their attempt to persuade a European Union court to unfreeze their assets on the ground that they are already subject to judicial proceedings in Egypt for misappropriation of state funds.

One EU organ - the General Court of the European Union - came to the aid of another - an unnamed council - last Thursday when it upheld its fellow body's decision not only to freeze all the funds of the Mubarak clan in the EU in 2011 but also its decisions to renew the freezing orders in 2016 and 2017. The court said that the judicial proceedings in Egypt do not respect the right to an effective remedy, nor do they respect the presumption of innocence protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, a pale recent echo of the much more famous European Convention of Human Rights that Winston Churchill's lawyers drew up in 1950.

The HNW individuals in question are Suzanne Saleh Thabet, Mubarak's wife, their sons and their sons’ wives, plus others.