Egypt: an NGO denounces preventive arrests

(illustration) An NGO for the defense of human rights, ECRF, denounces preventive arrests in Egypt: 147 people arrested in September 2020 have not given any sign of life.

AFP PHOTO / MOHAMED EL-SHAHED

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2 min

At least 944 people have been pre-emptively arrested in Egypt over suspicion of protests.

This is the count conducted by the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an NGO for the defense of human rights.

And 147 defendants have still not been presented to a judge;

their families do not know where they are. 

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with our correspondent in Cairo,

Edouard Dropsy

From mid-September, we witnessed in Egypt throughout the country a massive deployment of the police.

Passers-by were checked, phones searched, apartments visited ... And this, because of a fear of demonstrations similar to those of September 2019 which had taken the authorities by surprise.

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: "the situation is explosive because the response is likely to be violent", explained Claire Talon, specialist in Egypt in September 2019

But this year the scale of the demonstrations was not the same according to Mohamed Lotfi, the director of the

ECRF

, an NGO for the defense of human rights.

“ 

The cities have not mobilized.

They were rather villages or places around the main towns

 , ”he explains.

Arrested for having published calls for a demonstration on social networks or spotted in the provinces by the police, 147 of these alleged protesters have still not given any sign of life.

" 

The government denies the enforced disappearances, claims that these people who cannot be found have run away or joined a Terrorist group, while we know very well that (in) all or almost all cases, ( the persons who reappeared before the prosecution had (been) detained by the authorities

 ”.

A strategy of intimidation, criticized by international NGOs, but which President Sisi's regime continues to use consistently.  

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  • Egypt

  • Human rights

  • Justice