Former Civil Democratic Movement spokesperson arrested, held in unknown location

Yehia Hussein Abdel Hady, the former spokesperson for the Civil Democratic Movement, was arrested by security forces from his home in the Cairo neighborhood of Medinet Nasr in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

According to Negad al-Borai, Abdel Hady’s lawyer, the former spokesperson is being held in an unknown location.

The specific details of the security forces who arrested the former spokesperson also remain unknown, as the former spokesperson’s family said those that conducted the raid just after midnight on Tuesday morning refused to identify themselves, according to Borai.

The arrest comes after five activists were arrested on Sunday evening, a day after they attended a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the January 25 revolution at the Karama Party’s headquarters in Cairo’s downtown Dokki neighborhood. Four of the activists, Gamal Abdel Fattah, Mohab al-Ebrashy, Khaled Bassiouny, Khaled Mahmoud, were were arrested at an  apartment in Giza’s Hadayek al-Ahram neighborhood, while Mostafa Faqir was arrested in Daqahlia.

The whereabouts of the five activists are still unknown.

Security forces shut down the Karama Party-organized commemoration ceremony, raiding the event and only allowed attendees to exit after making copies of their ID cards.

Abdel Hady has been summoned for interrogation in November after a citizen filed a legal complaint against him accusing him of offending the president and publishing false news in the articles he wrote for local media. However, he was released on the same day on LE 10,000 bail, pending further investigations by the National Security Agency, according to Borai.

The Civil Democratic Movement, an alliance of political parties that was formed in December 2017, published a statement on Monday,  denouncing what it called “repressive acts” against January 25 revolutionaries and calling on authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the five activists and immediately release them.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) also called for the release of the five activists on Monday and demanded that authorities should “hold those responsible for kidnapping them and detaining them accountable.”

“The ongoing detentions by security forces without allowing the detainees any of their rights is a clear and repeated disrespect to the Constitution, which guarantees personal freedom for citizens,” the ANHRI statement said.