Illegally detained activists summoned by prosecutor amid wave of forced disappearances

Several activists who were allegedly abducted by security forces and illegally detained over the past few weeks faced the prosecutor on Friday. Lawyers have documented dozens of forced disappearances recently, a phenomenon that they say marks a new phase in the Interior Ministry’s unconstitutional crackdown on activists.

These incidents have largely targeted members of the April 6 Youth Movement, leading some to speculate that the crackdown is in response to the group’s call for a general strike on June 11 to protest the deteriorating economic conditions and political climate of the past two years.

Activist Mona Seif counted up to 16 forced disappearances in a statement she posted on her Facebook page. She said six of those people have now been located, but the whereabouts of the other 10 still remain unknown.

Lawyer Mohamed Bakr told Mada Masr that Mahmoud Basha, a member of April 6 Youth Movement’s political bureau, was allegedly illegally detained by Interior Ministry personnel in Sheikh Zayed on Thursday. His whereabouts were unknown until he was summoned by the October 6 prosecution on Friday. His fellow April 6 activists Nagwa Ezz and Ahmed al-Zayat were also purportedly apprehended on the streets of Marg Thursday, and were also summoned before the prosecutor in Marg on Friday for investigations into charges of belonging to an illegal organization and unlawfully calling for protests, according to Seif’s statement. Others, including activist Dalia Radwan, have already been released on bail pending investigations.

According to Seif, photographer Israa al-Tawil and her friends Omar Mohamed and Soheib Saad were reported missing on June 1, after they left for a horseback ride and never returned. Their friends and lawyers were able to confirm that they were detained on that day, but have not been able to determine where they are being held.

In one of the most flagrant cases, engineering student Islam Atito was allegedly abducted from his classroom while he was taking an exam at Ain Shams University last month. Fellow students said a security officer and another unknown man summoned him from the classroom, and that he never returned. Atito was found dead the following day. The Interior Ministry claimed that Atito was involved in the assassination of a police officer, and was killed during a shootout with police forces in the Fifth Settlement as he attempted to evade arrest.  

“We reached a point of having killing squads in the Ministry of Interior used against activists. The rights of citizens are being lost, and the Constitution ignored. The Ministry of Interior is taking its vengeance against the people who made the January 25 revolution,” Mokhtar Mounir, a lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, told Mada Masr. Mounir is currently working with a group of lawyers to locate and defend several of the activists named in Seif’s statement.

Mounir said that these arrests are unconstitutional. Article 54 in the Constitution states that “all those arrested or detained shall be informed of the reasons and of their rights in writing, and allowed to immediately contact their kin and lawyer, and be presented to the investigating authority within 24 hours of the time of arrest.”

He claimed that the prosecution has failed to respond to his requests for more information on the arrests of his clients. Lawyers must get prior permission to visit their clients in detention — members of the general prosecution are the only personnel legally permitted to inspect places of detention to check for violations of rights or illegal detentions without prior authorization.

Several political parties and rights groups issued a joint statement on Friday condemning this wave of forced disappearances, decrying it as part of an ongoing “belittling of the institution of justice in Egypt.” The signatories include Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Dostour Party and the Popular Socialist Alliance.