Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian American sociologist and human rights activist who was imprisoned in 2000 under suspicion of espionage and corruption. His defense team countered that the real motives behind the government's persecution of Ibrahim and his assistants was his blatant criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his government. He received a seven-year sentence, but was later released, some claim, because of external political pressure. Ibrahim is a contentious person who gained the respect and admiration of Egypt's human rights and civil society organization in the early the late 1980s for championing the cause of democracy in the Arab world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Ibrahim is credited for playing a leading role in the revival of Egypt's contemporary research-based civil society movement. He is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. Ibrahim also teaches at the American University in Cairo.