Policemen wearing black clothes and a helmet are forming a line Alkarama has just solicited the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to urgently ask the Egyptian authorities to end the judicial harassment against 14-year-old Ibrahim and 17-year-old Ahmed Shaaban Youssef and to release the latter.

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From left to right, photos of faces of Mohamed Adel, Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Douma On 3 December 2015, on the basis of a submission from Alkarama, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) adopted Opinion n°49/2015, in which it recognised the arbitrary nature of the detention of prominent Egyptian blogger Ahmed Saad Douma Saad and of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement co-founders Ahmed Maher Ibrahim Tantawy and Mohamed Adel Fahmi. Consequently, the WGAD asked the Egyptian authorities to immediately release the three young men and to grant them their enforceable right to remedy.

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David Kaye, UN United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, is speaking on the microphone. In a letter addressed to the Egyptian authorities and published in the recent communications report of special procedures for the 31st session of the Human Rights Council, David Kaye, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (SR FREEDEX), voiced his concerns regarding the state of freedom of expression in Egypt, a country where dozens of journalists have been arrested in the past years. Alkarama shares the Special Rapporteur’s point of view and has in fact documented many cases of freedom of expression’s violations in Egypt to UN Special Procedures, such as to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the disappearance of journalist Sabry Anwar Mohamed Abdelhamid, after his arrest at home on 21 February 2016.

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Asser Abdelwarth before his arrest by the police On 12 January 2016, Asser Mohammed Zahr Aldeen Abdelwarth, a 15-year-old boy, disappeared after the police arrested him at his home in Giza, leading Alkarama to send an urgent appeal to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID). His family eventually learned that he had reappeared in detention and was able to see him on 23 February. During their visit, the 15-year-old boy told them that he had been repeatedly tortured by members of the Homeland Security while he was secretly detained, prompting Alkarama to send an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) to ask the Egyptian authorities to investigate his reports and to guarantee his physical and mental health.

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Between late December 2015 and early February 2016, members of the Homeland Security and of the police arrested another three men for no apparent reason. Two young brothers, Abdelmoneim and Abdelrahman Nasr Kotb Mousa and father-of-four Mohammed Gommaa Mahmoud El Safty, have been missing since and their respective families remain unaware of their fates and whereabouts, despite having solicited various official bodies. Left without any recourse at the national level, they contacted Alkarama who sent urgent appeals to the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (WGEID), asking this United Nations Special Procedure on human rights to request the Egyptian authorities to immediately disclose their places of detention and to authorise their families and lawyers to visit them.

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Despite documenting an increasing number of cases of enforced disappearances in the hands of all kinds of government forces in the country, the international community has continuously failed to address this issue with the Egyptian government. Since the beginning of the year alone, Alkarama documented several cases of enforced disappearance, five of which occurred in the space of a week, including the cases of 46-year-old electrician, Ahmed Mahmoud Mohamed Metwally − who went missing following his arrest by the army in the North Sinai on 29 October 2015 − and that of Amr Mohammed Mohammed Al Emam and Ahmed Awany Abdelbasir Mohammed − disappeared in the hands of the Homeland Security on 10 February 2016. With a view to make them reappear, Alkarama raised their respective cases with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) hoping its intervention with the Egyptian authorities will bear fruit.

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Alkarama calls upon the Egyptian authorities to revoke the procedure launched on 17 February 2016 to close the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture. Founded in 1993, the Nadeem Center is a well-known Egyptian clinic that has provided professional council and assistance to thousands of victims of torture and other forms of violence since its creation. As it started to document an increasing number of cases of police violence, the administrative procedure launched against it seems to have no other aim than stifling one of the few remaining independent organisations in the country.

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A 48-year-old lawyer and member of liberal political party Al Dostour, Raafat Faisal Ali Shehata − also known as Ahsraf Shehata − disappeared in the hands of the Egyptian Homeland Security more than two years ago, on 13 January 2014. While the authorities continue to deny his detention claiming that Ashraf left Egypt, his wife was told by several former detainees or families of detainees that he was effectively detained. She even thought she had found him when the Ministry of Interior recently listed him as serving a five-year prison sentence in Zagzagig prison, but the information was soon denied by the same Ministry, which kept on claiming they did not know anything about the victim. In last resort, Ashraf's relatives contacted Alkarama, hoping its work with the United Nations human rights protection mechanisms might help shed light on Ashraf's disappearance.

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In early February 2016, the Homeland Security arrested another two young men for no apparent reason. 25-year-old real-estate agent, Abo Obida Sayed Mahmoud Abdelhameed and 28-year-old imam, Islam Ibrahim Eltohamy Ibrahim have both been missing since, and despite having solicited various official bodies, their respective families remain unaware of their fates and whereabouts. Left without any recourse at the national level, they contacted Alkarama who sent an urgent appeal to the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (WGEID), asking this United Nations human rights mechanism to request the Egyptian authorities to immediately disclose their place of detention and authorise their families and lawyers to visit them, in accordance with Egypt's international obligations.

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On 7 February 2016, teachers Medhat Mohamed Bahi Aldin Ahmed Abdelhameed and Magdy Hassan Amer Hassan disappeared following their arrest by the Egyptian police from Medhat's apartment in Giza. Despite having solicited various official bodies to establish their fates and whereabouts, their respective families, blissfully unaware of the reasons for their arrests, were met with a wall of silence. In view of the facts and the lack of remedy at the national level, and with the hope of putting an end to their enforced disappearance, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), asking this United Nations human rights protection mechanism to request the Egyptian authorities to disclose their respective places of detention and authorise their families and lawyers to visit them.

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