Eight Egyptian detainees return to families after disappearance
Eight Egyptian detainees from the southern governate of Aswan have discreetly been reunited with their families on May 10th after they were forcibly disappeared by authorities in 2018, according to The New Arab on June 18th.
The arrests occurred in October and November 2018, which led to all detainees vanishing without ever appearing before a judicial authority. Various rights groups say they were held incommunicado for almost six years without being charged or undergoing legal process.
The Egyptian government released the men, who worked various jobs such as sales staff and drivers, without making any official statement whatsoever. Their release and reunion with their families was described as discreet and unannounced.
The Shehab Centre for Human Rights has cautioned that the men still run the risk of facing reprisals from Egyptian authorities.
One of the detainees is Jaafar Abdulaziz, a 44-year-old man who was abducted outside his residence on October 20th, 2018.
Alarm has frequently been expressed by rights groups over the Egyptian government’s chronic tendency to forcibly disappear civilians. However, the true scale and frequency of these disappearances is challenging to gauge due to state-imposed restrictions and surveillance.
At least 4,253 cases of enforced disappearance have been recorded by the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. The year in which the most disappearances were recorded was 2019 with 927 cases, followed by 2015 with 816 cases, then 2016 with 691 cases.
In 2024, Amnesty International stated that dozens continue to be disappeared, emphasising the prevalent patterns of arbitrary detention, torture, and unfair trials.
Rights groups stressed that there remain thousands of detainees whose status remains entirely unknown, despite welcome the return of the Aswan detainees.
They denounced the practise of enforced disappearance as a blatant violation of human rights and implored the Egyptian authorities to adhere to their constitutional and international obligations.
A concerning link between Egypt’s election cycles and enforced disappearances was uncovered in a recent study by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances which was submitted to the Committee for Justice in May 2024.
The report proposed that enforced disappearances were used as an instrument of intimidation to suppress dissent and political activity during sensitive periods. Diplomatic tensions recently rose between Egypt and the UK after a British-Egyptian writer called Alaa Abd el-Fattah was arrested after sharing a social media post which exposed torture methods used by Egyptian authorities on prisoners.
The New Arab, Maghrebi.org
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