Following its review of human rights in Egypt on Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Council will be issuing recommendations this afternoon.

By an ironic coincidence, this comes as Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA, winner of the Nobel peace prize and – of more immediate significance – a potential candidate in the 2011presidential election, is due to return home to Egypt after many years abroad.

The authorities have warned that any large crowds gathering at the airport to welcome him will be treated as illegal. This is one of the restrictions imposed under Egypt's semi-permanent "state of emergency" (which the UN is likely to criticise today).

Earlier this week, two members of the Sixth of April Youth movement were arrested for spray-painting walls in Cairo with slogans calling for political change and supporting ElBaradei.

So far, ElBaradei has only hinted that he might run for the presidency if the rules are changed to allow a free and fair election (which is unlikely) but that was enough to trigger a hostile reaction from the Mubarak regime.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights will be tweeting from Geneva during this afternoon's session of the Human Rights Council. A couple of noteworthy tweets from the Wednesday session were: "The Egyptian government failed to engage constructively with the review and instead chose to justify or deny human rights abuses" and "Most Arab states, took the floor in mass to offer praise while avoiding making any substantial human rights recommendations to Egypt."

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 19 February 2010.