Lawyers Gamal Eid and Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, both FDEP members, said that all the arrested were in custody by midnight Monday.
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HRW said six foreign journalists were among those detained, but were later released.
Egypt’s top prosecutor referred the low-ranking policeman accused of killing a tea vendor earlier in April to criminal court on Wednesday.
Human rights workers, activists, and ordinary citizens have largely scrutinized police brutality in Egypt over the past few months.
“This is the highest number of arrests in one single day since the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in”, the rights group said.
From their apartments’ balconies, the square’s pro-el-Sissi residents shouted “traitors” at the protesters below and pelted them with water.
Thousands of police and soldiers were deployed across the Egyptian capital.
Security forces moved swiftly on Monday to prevent this scenario from repeating, blocking roads in Cairo leading to a popular downtown meeting point and dispersing a march in the Dokki neighborhood with tear gas as it took off, a witness said.
All protests across the country were dispersed but activists reported only minor injuries.
ANSA said the family of Giulio Regeni, whose death poisoned Egypt’s close relations with Italy, was distraught over the news of Abdullah’s arrest.
Early Monday morning, police raided the home of one prominent rights activist, Ahmad Abdallah, the director of the board of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms.
After years of unrest that has decimated the economy, many Egyptians say the country needs a firm hand and they have little patience with protesters they consider troublemakers.
The effort to contain a second wave of protests over the islands was created to be swift and forceful, government officials said.
Opposition groups called for Monday’s rallies to protest a recent decision by the al-Sisi regime to cede two Red Sea islands – which for decades had been considered Egyptian territory – to Saudi Arabia.
The controversial maritime border readjustment, which was announced during a recent visit by Saudi King Salman to Egypt, has sparked public outrage and accusations that al-Sisi was “selling” Egyptian territory to Saudi Arabia, which was a major supporter of Morsi’s ouster nearly three years ago.
At the time it announced he would eventually be tried on vague charges of espionage and for a mass prison break during the 18-day revolt that overthrew his predecessor Hosni Mubarak in 2011. On 15 April about 2,000 people protested in central Cairo over the islands. The programme is a statistical observatory that monitors and documents protests and human rights violations.
The following day, as the protests against the government were trying to get started, hundreds of Sissi’s supporters demonstrated across the city under the protection of the police.
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“Those who want to protest against the government implement the evil plans of the United States which works hard to destroy Egypt”.
