On 13 September 2015, Anas and Azzam were driving towards Alexandria from their village of Mit Khaqan in the Menoufia Governorate, North of Cairo, when the two Menoufia University students were stopped at a checkpoint located at kilometer 21 on Alexandria road. There, officers from the Homeland Security and of the General Investigations Department checked their identities and arrested them before forcing them into a car that left for an undisclosed location.

Informed of their sons' arrest by eye witnesses, on 14 September 2015 their family solicited the Ministry of Interior and the Public Prosecutor of Menoufia via telegrams, following which they finally received a response from the prosecution office in Sheeben El Kom on 28 September. The same day they were then summoned to this office, where they filed a request for investigations and were told that investigations would be opened within the next 10 days. To this day, however, and even though some people who came back from El Dekheila station told Anas and Azzam's parents that their sons could be detained there, they weren't able to confirm this information as the authorities continue to deny their detentions.

"As for numerous cases of enforced disappearances that we have documented in the past year, neither of the victims' friends or relatives understand the potential reasons behind their disappearances," explains Alkarama's Legal Director Rachid Mesli. "What we observe, however, is a real surge in cases of enforced disappearances in the country, which is all the more worrying that these periods of secret detention by the Egyptian security apparatus are the occasion of numerous abuses against victims, especially against young people who are more vulnerable than adults."

Their relatives fear that they two boys could be tortured during their secret detention, a recurring practice in Egypt in order to force people to confess to crimes they have not committed, such as in the case of sales director Hosni Al Nagar, arrested by the 10th of Ramadan Homeland Security in July 2015 and forced to sign confessions under torture before being charged with "affiliation to a terrorist cell linked to the Muslim Brotherhood" and various other acts of sabotage.

In view of these facts and the apparent impossibility for the family to obtain remedy at the local level, Alkarama sent an urgent action to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to ask the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Anas and Azzam Magdy Abdelfattah Mahmoud Allam. Alkarama urges the public prosecution to effectively launch investigations into their disappearances and to bring those responsible to justice. The authorities should put an end to the widespread practice of enforced disappearances and ensure that every single person arrested is detained in official places of detention, charged by a competent body, granted the right to challenge the lawfulness of his detention and authorised to see his family and lawyer.

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