The facts

On 10 February 2016, as 34-year-old Amr Mohammed Mohammed Al Emam and 21-year-old Ahmed Awany Abdelbasir Mohammed − two friends from the village of Dyarb Negm in Al Sharqia Governorate − were visiting the city of Aswan in the South of Egypt, they were stopped by members of the Homeland Security near the Security Directorate, on Kornish Al Nile. The latter asked the two young men and their friends to disclose their identities and then arrested Amr and Ahmed, without reason.

Informed by the two men's friends of their arrests, Amr and Ahmed's families immediately contacted some lawyers in Aswan who, after some investigations, told them that they had first been brought to Aswan First Police Station and then to the Homeland Security Department but that they had not been seen since. Despite sending telegrams to various official bodies on 11 February asking about their disappearance, their families remain unaware of their fates and whereabouts.

Less than three months earlier, on 29 October 2015, in the context of the state of emergency in force in the North Sinai, members of the Egyptian army wearing hoods raided 46-year-old Ahmed Metwally's home, threatening his relatives before arresting him and leaving for an unknown location. His family's efforts to locate him, through communications with both the North Sinai Attorney General and the General Prosecutor of the Ismailia Governorate remained dead letter.

As a consequence, the three victims' families fear that they could be subjected to torture during their secret detention − a common practice from the security apparatus in Egypt, such as in the case of Mahmoud Talaat Abdelhamid, a student tortured in Lazoghly State Security facility in Cairo during the summer of 2015.

Alkarama's action

With a view to ending the victims' secret detentions and their respective families' ordeals which may amount to torture, Alkarama sent their cases to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), asking it to request from the Egyptian authorities to disclose their places of detention and to authorise their relatives and lawyers to visit them immediately.

Alkarama also calls on the international community to take urgent and effective action regarding this practice, which has also been denounced by numerous local organisations and activists, including by publicly condemning its systematisation in the country. UN Members States could use the platform provided by the next Human Rights Council session in March to do so.

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