Ibrahim Shaker and Serag Abdel Mawla were abducted together on 19 January 2015 by officers of the General Investigations Services after they raided their flat in the Bijam neighbourhood of Shubra El-Kheima, North Cairo. Both men had already been arrested in 2014 for peacefully demonstrating and charged under the restrictive law n°107-2013 on protest. They had been sharing this flat since.

After having spent four days in jail, they had been released pending trial but the authorities came back to abduct them on 19 January. They have not reappeared since, despite complaints sent to Shubra El-Kheima General Attorney by their respective families. Their relatives fear, in fact, that they be subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during their secret detention in one of the infamous intelligence services detention facilities, because of their alleged political affiliations.

Metwally Mohamed was arrested by members of the Security Forces who raided his house in Shubra El-Kheima in the early morning of 20 January 2015. The security forces did not present any warrant nor provided any justification for his arrest and forcibly brought him to an undisclosed location. Worried over his fate and whereabouts, his family filed a complaint on the same day before the public prosecutor's office but to no avail.

To the contrary, the officers came back the following day and arrested Metwally's son, Hisham Mohamed, without any reason. Fearing they could be arrested as well if they were to file a new complaint regarding Hisham's arrest, his family preferred not taking steps to find him. They have not heard from the two men since their abductions.

These four men are amongst the hundreds of Egyptian citizens who have been abducted by the authorities in the past year – more than 300 according to Alkarama's Egypt Researcher Ahmed Mefreh – a particularly worrying practice that confirms the seriousness of the human rights situation in Egypt and the need for the international community to address it swiftly.

After the arbitrary and mass executions of demonstrators in 2013 following the military coup, Alkarama states that the systematic, widespread and trivialised practice of enforced disappearances in Egypt also characterises a crime against humanity – as underlined in the Preamble of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED) – and asks that appropriate measures be taken to abolish this practice and to bring justice to the victims and their families.

In this regard, Alkarama called upon the WGEID to intervene with the Egyptian authorities to immediately disclose Ibrahim Shaker, Serag Abdel Mawla, Metwally Mohamed and Hisham Mohamed places of detention and that their respective families be authorised to visit them immediately.

The four men should be put under the protection of the law and, should reports of ill-treatment during their secret detentions be made by the victims, the authorities would have to launch impartial and thorough investigations into their allegations to bring the perpetrators to justice. We urge the Egyptian government to send a formal invitation to the UN WGEID to conduct a country visit and to take appropriate measures to put an end to this gross practice.

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