- EGYPT
- February 11, 2016
- 8 minutes read
Rights NGO Condemns Forced Disappearance of 20 Alexandrian Students
Egyptian Coordinating Committee of Rights and Freedom (ECRF) denounces Egyptian security agencies, which have subjected more than twenty high-school students to enforced disappearance after arresting them from their homes in Alexandria last Thursday (February 4, 2016), following a false report against them that claimed they burnt the car of a junior police officer called Shehab in a dispute over real estate money between the police officer and a contractor.
Although such a charge requires prosecutors to open an investigation and that ‘suspects’ stand trial, security troops abducted the teenagers, did not give them the chance to have lawyers present, and did not allow their families to visit them.
In fact, thus far, families have no information about their loved ones’ fate or whereabouts. Indeed, families have been told their sons are being subjected to the worst kinds of torture in Montaza Police Station in Alexandria, their very lives are at serious risk.
One security officer cruelly said to the disappeared teenagers’ families: "I hope you have other children. These ones… if they cannot last the (torture) trip… we will call you, so you can pick their bodies from the morgue", which made them deeply concerned. They asked for urgent rights and legal support, in order to save their loved ones from illegitimate forced disappearance and inhuman torture.
For its part, ECRF stands with this appeal, and holds the Interior Ministry responsible for the safety of these students. ECRF also demands urgent, unified endeavors by local and international human rights organizations to save the students, especially since the Interior Ministry’s crimes of extrajudicial killing has become a systematic practice that intensified brutally in the past few months.
ECRF warns that if authorities do not open a real urgent investigation into all cases of seemingly state-sponsored murder and assassinations committed by Interior Ministry forces recently, the rule of law in Egypt will severely diminish, and citizens will lose confidence in the independence and impartiality of the justice system.
The following is a list of the names of the kidnapped students:
1. Amr Gamal Abdel-Moneim
2. Abdel-Rahman Moataz
3. Anas Mohamed Naguib
4. Ahmed Mohamed Ali
5. Hisham Abdel-Dayem
6. Ahmed Harfoush
7. Ahmed Abdel-Fattah Abdel-Salam
8. Abdullah Omar Abdullah Qambar
9. Karim Shaltout
10. Hossam Fouad Amory
11. Tarek Abdel-Dayem
12. Ibrahim Shaltout
13. Abdel-Rahman Imam
14. Ibrahim Al-Hallaq
15. Marawan Imam
16. Mohamed Elsheshtawy
17. Yehya Mohamed
18. Khamis Tawfik
19. Mohamed Abdel-Hadi
20. Mohamed Hassan Al-Bishr
Egyptian Coordinating Committee of Rights and Freedom (ECRF) #التنسيقية_المصرية_للحقوق_والحريات
Cairo: Tuesday – February 9, 2016
