April 6 activists stopped at airport, interrogated by ‘sovereign body’

A human rights organization warned that Mubarak-era security practices may be returning after two activists were stopped at Cairo International Airport upon arrival in Egypt on Friday.

Mohamed Adel and Ramy al-Sayyed, two activists with the April 6 Youth Movement, were interrogated for three hours by officials who only identified themselves as from a “sovereign body,” a euphemism for state security, one of the activists told Mada Masr.

 “I have never been stopped since January 25,” Adel told Mada Masr. “I had been stopped once in 2009.”

“We knew they were working with state security. They aren’t public officers. They said they were from a ‘sovereign body’ [but] we knew them personally.”

In a press release, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said that Adel and Sayyed were put on an arrivals watch list without an order from a court or prosecutor.

In the interrogation, the activists were asked why they traveled to Bulgaria to participate in a conference, the topics they discussed there and their views on these topics.

Adel and Sayyed were being hosted by the Sofia Platform, which describes itself as “a democracy assistance organization for the countries and societies undergoing a process of transition.” It tries to share the experience of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe with Middle Eastern activists.

“We said after July 3 [that] Egypt is going back to [the] Mubarak regime, and these men aren’t doing well for human rights,” said Adel.

The officers allegedly inspected their cell phones, laptops and tablets, and copied all of their data after using software to bypass password protections. They also attempted to break into their email accounts. Adel said that the authorities placed software on the devices after they were finished copying the data.

ANHRI’s statement described the incident as a sign of the return of repressive security measures as practiced under the notoriously harsh Habib al-Adly, Mubarak’s last minister of interior, and urged Prosecutor General Hesham Barakat to investigate the incident.