Arrested photojournalist appears in Marg police station with marks of torture

A photojournalist who was arrested on Saturday was seen at the Marg Police Station on Monday bearing signs of torture, according to his lawyer Ali al-Halawany.

Omar Adel was arrested on Saturday afternoon at the Matareya metro station and his whereabouts remained unknown. Halawany, lawyer with Journalists Against Torture had filed three complaints at the General Prosecutor against Adel’s disappearance, until he caught sight of him at the Marg Police Station on Monday.

“They kept denying he was there until I saw him myself,” Halawany told Mada Masr. “His face was red and swollen and as soon as I called out his name they took him away.”

Adel was arrested with four other people whose identity and whereabouts remain unknown.

The photojournalist is being held without charge and has not been referred to the prosecution. Halawany explained that he is thus being held illegally since no official report was filed.

The Marg prosecution told Halawany that Adel’s case is with National Security and there is little they can do about his release, prompting the lawyer to submit a request to refer him to the prosecution and open an official investigation.

“They can bring whatever charges against him and we will handle it,” he said. “We just want them to file an official report at the prosecution.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) listed Egypt as the second worst jailer of journalists, following China, with 23 journalists currently in jail, eight of whom were imprisoned in 2015.

According to figures from Al-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), over 500 people have been forcibly disappeared in the past year in Egypt, with 396 people remaining unaccounted for.

The National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), in its 11th annual report, highlighted the rise in forced disappearances in Egypt. The NCHR reported that they had identified the whereabouts of 276 people who have been forcibly disappeared in Egypt.

In April, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published the names of more than 390 Egyptians who have been forcibly disappeared since August 2015, prompted by the assertion that Giulio Regeni’s murder “is not an isolated case,” as proclaimed by his mother and dozens of Egyptian activists.