In the middle of the night of 23 August 2015, several men in civilian clothes broke into the Farag family home in Shubra El Kheima, a city located in the outskirts of Cairo. Claiming that they belonged to the Homeland Security, they destroyed objects in the house and collected all the phones and identity cards before dragging Mohamed, Abdelaziz and Ismael out of the house and forcing them into a vehicle that left for an undisclosed location.

Fearing for the three men's fates, on 24 August 2015 their relatives sent a telegram to the Public Prosecutor of Shubra Al Kheima, but it remained unanswered. Instead, officers from the Homeland Security stormed in their home at around 6pm that same day, destroying additional objects and taking some of the family's food with them, before coming back to threaten them once again at around 11pm. The Farag family believes that Mohamed, Abdelaziz and Ismael could have been arrested in response to a terrorist attack that occurred three days earlier near a security building in Shubra El Kheima, which led to reprisals against innocent people living in the neighbourhood, including numerous abductions and subsequent enforced disappearances. For fear of more reprisals, the three men's family stopped inquiring about their relatives' whereabouts, even though they fear that their relatives could be tortured during their secret detention. In fact, Alkarama documented several cases of torture in the past years in Egypt, especially against alleged political opponents, but also against children.

Hoping that Alkarama might help them shed light on Mohamed, Abdelazizand Ismael Farag's fates, their relatives solicited Alkarama, which sent an urgent appeal to the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to ask the Egyptian authorities to immediately disclose their place of detention and, in the absence of credible charges held against them, to release them.

The authorities have to put an end to the practice of enforced disappearances and to ensure that all arrests of citizens are lawful and justified, and are not made in violation of fundamental rights, in particular the ones enshrined in the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), binding upon Egypt by virtue of its ratification in January 1982.

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