The seven cases documented by Alkarama are individuals of all branches of society – students, teachers, workers – who have been abducted in different Egyptian cities and directorates, showing the institutionalisation of the practice of enforced disappearances by the Homeland Security – formerly known as the State Security Investigations Services – across the country.

Messrs Mohamed Shehata Mohammed Abdelhadi, aged 33; Ammar Ali Mahmoud Juma, aged 22; Momen Samir Attia, aged 16; Ibrahim Mohamed Sadiq, aged 42; Hassan Farouk Sharaf, aged 32; Shafie Jaber Mahmoud Meshal, aged 52; and Tarek Wagdy Mohamed Abdullah, aged 34 were all abducted solely for their alleged affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood, which continues to be persecuted by the authorities since the July 2013 military coup.

Momen Samir Attia's case is illustrative of the systematisation of the practice of enforced disappearances in Egypt and of the authorities' will to stifle all kind of alleged dissidence, even regarding children. Despite their particular vulnerability, they are not immune to the authorities' exactions, as Alkarama call regarding 52 children tortured and abused in an Alexandrian prison had previously shown.

To date, none of the different steps taken by their families towards the authorities – the public prosecution, attorney general and ministries – to shed light on their fate have been answered. As a matter of fact, the judicial apparatus is often not informed of arrests perpetrated by the Homeland Security, one of Egypt's main intelligence services that acts with total impunity and independence from the judiciary.

Arrests made by the Homeland Security are in violation of Egyptian law as they are usually made without prior authorisation from the public prosecution, as it was the case with the seven men, who are therefore held outside the protection of the law. In fact, the Homeland Security often fabricates charges against individuals during their secret detention – often by extracting the victims' confessions under torture – prior to bringing them before the public prosecution, which officially convicts them under those new charges and changes the day of their arrests to erase their time spent in secret detention.

It therefore becomes nearly impossible for families to know the whereabouts of their relatives before the authorities decide to make them reappear. Only reports from former inmates can lead families to learn about the fates of their loved ones, but even in these circumstances the authorities usually continue to deny their detention.

Still unaware of the fates and whereabouts of their relatives, the families of the seven victims fear for their physical and psychological integrity, especially since their alleged political background puts them at great risk of being tortured during their secret detention and could also lead them to be accused under trumped-up charges.

Alkarama therefore urged the WGEID to intervene with the Egyptian authorities to ask them to immediately disclose the seven men's current place of detention and to authorise their families and lawyers to see them and to release them. Alkarama recalls that the systematic and generalised practice of enforced disappearances is a crime against humanity and insists on the necessity for the Egyptian authorities to put an end to it and to prosecute and punish those responsible for it.

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