On the 12 December 2014, Mohammed was at home with his family when several police officers in civilian clothes came and asked for him. They arrested him, his wife and their two-year-old daughter, without giving any reason or showing an arrest warrant, and took them to the police station of Agouza, a small suburb of Giza district, on the western bank of the Nile River.

Whilst he was handcuffed by police officers who repeatedly beat him with their fists and feet, Mohamed's wife and daughter were also threatened, before being released after a few hours in custody. On the same day, Mohammed was brought before the public prosecutor who interrogated him in absence of a lawyer. He was subsequently charged with "incitement to violence trough the newspaper" and "spreading false news". During his hearing, he asked to see a doctor but, despite the evident physical signs of abuse on his body, the prosecutor rejected his demand and even ordered to keep Mohamed in detention for four additional days for alleged "investigations reasons".

Mohamed was later accused of having been an active contributor to leaks of conversations between official government figures. Since the end of 2014, a series of recordings of early 2014, which cannot be independently verified, have been aired incriminating President Sisi then Defence Minister, and two members of his staff, Brigadier General Abbas Kamil, manager of Sisi's office, and Mahmoud Higazi, then head of intelligence and now head of the army.

The alleged recordings were leaked over the past few months by Mekameleen TV – a Turkey-based Egyptian TV channel – with which Mohammed was also accused of working, an accusation that he also strongly rejected.

Eventually, on 23 December 2014, Mohamed was brought again before the prosecutor who prolonged his detention for another 15 new days. He was subsequently transferred to a cell with convicted criminals in Wadi el-Natrun prison, an Egyptian prison complex in the Beheira Governorate, 120 km north of Cairo, which holds several prominent Muslim Brotherhood activists and is notorious for its common practice of torture, in particular against journalists and other opposition activists.

Since then, his detention has been renewed every 15 days and no date has yet been set for his trial. He has not even been able to see his family, despite their repeated calls to the authorities. In protest against his arbitrary detention and the appalling detention conditions inside the prison, he started a hunger strike a few days ago. As for his family, fearing for his health and left without recourse at the local level, they contacted Alkarama to intercede for them with the UN human rights protection mechanisms.

In light of the information, Alkarama called upon the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) to ask the Egyptian authorities to guarantee Mohamed Ali Hassan's physical and psychological health and allow him to see his family, to thoroughly and independently investigate the reports of torture he made, and to respect its international obligations, especially those under the Convention against torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Egypt respectively accessed in June 1986 and November 1989.

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