Amnesty: 3 Morsi aides moved to unknown locations

Three of deposed President Mohamed Morsi's aides have been relocated to unknown locations after being held incommunicado at a military detention facility since July 3, Amnesty International said in an urgent call for action Thursday.

The three aids, Khaled al-Qazzaz, Ayman al-Serafy and Abdelmeguid Mashali, were allegedly transferred to unknown locations on Tuesday. Their families received information that they may be moved to Tora Maximum Security Prison — known as Al-Aqrab Prison, meaning the “scorpion” in Arabic — but they have received no updates as to their whereabouts since.

Fellow members of the former president’s administration, Essam al-Haddad and Ayman Ali, who were detained with them, are still being held incommunicado.

"The five men’s families have tried to appoint lawyers to represent them, but they have been denied this right. In Essam al-Haddad's case, lawyers told Amnesty International that the Alexandria notary public office had informed them on 12 December that there were instructions from the Ministry of Justice not to give any lawyer power of attorney to represent him," Amnesty said.

Local media reports have claimed that the three aides were arrested by security forces from an apartment in Heliopolis, but Amnesty asserted that these reports "conflict markedly with the fact that the three men have been held incommunicado since July 3."

"The three men risk facing trumped-up charges, after being held incommunicado for more than five months," Amnesty explained.

The National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, an umbrella group formed following Morsi's ouster in opposition to the military-appointed interim government, said in a statement that the three aids were transferred to an unknown location to await the "fabrication of political accusations against them."

"This is another step that proves the coup leaders' determination to oppress any sign of legitimacy," the statement added.

A decision by the prosecutor general to refer Morsi and other leading Brotherhood figures to the Cairo Criminal Court on Wednesday on charges of espionage and terrorism could explain the disappearance of the former president’s aides.

A statement maintaining this is the "biggest espionage case in Egypt's history" said that Morsi and his associates sought military training for Brotherhood members by smuggling them through illegal tunnels into the Gaza Strip, where they allegedly received combat-training at the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The plan was allegedly for the trained militants to return to Egypt to carry out terrorist operations at the behest of Morsi, the prosecution added.

Haddad, who was former assistant to the president on foreign affairs, is mentioned in the statement, which listed the names of 13 defendants and made reference to 25 others. Qazzaz, Serafy and Mashali were not mentioned by name in the case.