UPDATE: Two students detained for 15 days on terrorism, false news charges after expressing solidarity with Palestinians

Students Mazen Ahmed and Zeyad al-Bassiouny were presented to the Supreme State Security Prosecution on Monday which issued orders for both to be detained for 15 days on charges of joining a terrorist organization and publishing false news, lawyer Mohamed Abdel Aziz told Mada Masr.

The official detention orders come several days after security forces forcibly disappeared the two students, arresting Ahmed in Mansoura and Basyouni in Cairo, following their expressions of solidarity with Palestinians amid the aggression on the Gaza Strip, according to a leaflet which activists began to circulate on Sunday, calling for the students to be released.

Security personnel arrested Ahmed from a co-working space in Mansoura on May 8. On the following day, authorities raided the home of Zeyad al-Basyouni, a student at the Academy of Arts in Giza, and later arrested the arts student from a nearby street, the leaflet said. 

Prior to their appearance before the prosecution on Monday, authorities had not given their families official notification of their whereabouts nor presented them for prosecution, a researcher at the Criminal Justice unit of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights with knowledge of the incidents said to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

Ahmed and Basyouni became the latest subjects of a wave of arrests which has targeted protesters and activists organizing to show support for Palestine.

Acquaintances of Ahmed, a medical student at Mansoura University, said they lost contact with him and were later informed by close friends that he was apprehended at the co-working space on Wednesday afternoon, according to the campaign leaflet.

Basyouni’s brother, Khaled, described ten masked state security personnel raiding their mother’s house on Thursday. During the raid, the personnel pointed firearms at Khaled and his mother and personnel searched the residence, confiscating their phones. Other family members and acquaintances arrived at the house later and “were treated with the same violence,” Khaled wrote in a social media post on Sunday. 

The family was later informed by an acquaintance that Zeyad was “abducted” from the street near their home by a “security-affiliated microbus.”

Zeyad has no political involvement other than his “belief in the Palestinian cause,” Khaled said.

The release campaign leaflets circulated on Sunday said authorities had not officially notified relatives of their whereabouts, but that they had learned that both were being held at sites belonging to the National Security Agency, expressing concern about the students’ well-being given the absence of information and the notoriety associated with NSA practice.

The EIPR researcher documenting arrests noted that a third person was also arrested in recent days in relation to their political support for Palestine, bringing the total number detained since October 7 to 91 including three minors. 

Those who have appeared before investigating authorities have been held on charges ranging from participating in unauthorized demonstrations and holding up banners to the misuse of social media, according to the researcher.

Limited protests, some paired with expressions of support for Egypt’s leadership since Israel began its war on the Gaza Strip, have been held across the country since October 7.

Strict protest laws introduced in 2013 require all organized public demonstrations to gain security permits. 

Security-approved protests on October 20 saw state-aligned entities call on Egyptians to protest as a way of granting a “mandate” to Egypt’s leadership during the war.

However, even then, some participants were arrested after straying away from areas designated for the demonstrations after briefly reaching Tahrir Square, a place where public protests have not been seen for years.

More recently, at least sixteen women and passers-by were arrested in the vicinity of a demonstration held outside the UN Women regional office in Cairo last week in solidarity with women in Gaza and Sudan. The detainees were released on bail the following day.

The constraints on expressing solidarity with Palestinians have also extended to foreign activists in Egypt. Four foreign nationals were forcibly expelled from Egypt back in November for staging a pro-Palestine protest in front of the Foreign Ministry in Cairo. 

This article has been edited since publication to reflect new information.