• EGYPT
  • August 8, 2017
  • 3 minutes read

254 Cases of Enforced Disappearance in Egypt in 6 Months

254 Cases of Enforced Disappearance in Egypt in 6 Months

 In its latest report, rights group "The Egyptian Coordinating Committee of Rights and Freedoms" (ECRF) said "In the first half of 2017, Egypt witnessed a continuation of the security authorities’ policy of enforced disappearance of citizens against the background of the current political turmoil.



ECRF’s human rights report, on the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in Egypt, monitored 254 cases in the first six months of 2017. It noted that "only 47 victims were located".


ECRF said the month of May ranked highest in terms of the number of cases of the "forcibly disappeared", some 67 citizens, followed by April in which about 47 were disappeared. The figure stabilized at a level above 30-a-month in all other months.


ECRF further noted that, in the reporting period, youth ranked first in terms of number of "disappeared", with youths between the ages of 18 and 35 accounting for 104 cases of forced disappearance, followed by those aged 35 to 60, numbering 65 cases.


According to the ECRF report, most of the "disappeared" youths were students, with 77 victims, while members of various trade unions saw a large number of engineers forcibly disappeared (27 members), followed by doctors and medical professionals (19), then teachers (17), accountants (9), lawyers (7), and media workers and journalists (5).


Egypt’s Sharqiya governorate ranked first in terms of the number of enforced disappearances, with 33 victims documented in the first half of 2017, followed by Giza governorate with 32 cases.


At the end of its report, ECRF called for the Egyptian security services to stop committing the crime of enforced disappearance and to open urgent investigations in all cases, especially those where disappeared citizens have not been located as yet.