Two men disappear in Egypt after raid on state security HQ
Two men in Egypt have disappeared after storming the state security headquarters in protest of Egypt’s alleged role in Gaza’s blockade, according to Middle East Eye on July 29th.
The two men, 27-year-old Mohsen Mustafa and his 23-year-old cousin Ahmed Sherif Ahmed Abdel Wahab, posted on Facebook claiming responsibility for the infiltration of the facility and the detention of officials at the Ma’asara police station. The post has since been taken down and neither of the men have been heard from.
Egypt’s interior ministry issued two statements swiftly after the raid took place where it claimed that the footage recording the event was a fabrication created by the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine Egypt’s support for the Palestinian cause.
However, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights revealed that former detainees who were once held in the facility verified the footage as real.
Wahab’s family said he had no prior history of political involvement. However, Mustafa was detained and forcibly disappeared by Egyptian security forces in 2020, where he was subject to torture.
A family friend said that Mustafa’s first detention occurred as he was the only male present while security forces searched his house for one of his relatives. This was allegedly done to force Mustafa’s relative to turn himself in.
Mustafa was required to report to his local police station every month in the five years following his release under Egypt’s notorious “security monitoring” programme.
Ever since the state security headquarters were stormed on July 25th, every male member of the family has been arrested, and the entire family has been placed under informal house arrest where they are under surveillance by authorities 24/7.
With no updates on the whereabouts of the two men, alongside the interior ministry’s absolute denial that the raid even took place, the families are fearful for the lives of their relatives.
One family friend told Middle East Eye that “there is no chance of accountability for something that never happened.”
There exists an ugly legacy of Egyptian citizens being forcibly disappeared by state authorities, with at least 4,253 such cases being recorded by the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms.
Rights groups stress that the whereabouts of thousands of Egyptians remain unknown, and have condemned the practice of forced disappearance as a blatant violation of human rights.
Middle East Eye, Maghrebi.org
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