The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion on the arrest of 10 Egyptians who were then recycled into new cases after being forcibly disappeared for long periods. In its opinion, issued on 27 September, the UN group said that “there is a pattern in Egypt whereby the authorities re-imprison individuals who have been subjected to enforced disappearance or who have been continuously detained on fabricated charges in political cases, in order to keep them detained indefinitely, and they are subjected to torture during that period of disappearance”.
The “Committee for Justice” and the “Egyptian Front for Human Rights” had submitted information to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about 10 cases of Egyptian citizens subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance for long periods. Among these cases is citizen Islam Nasser Abdel Nabi Abdel Moneim, an accountant who was arrested on 24 September 2019 while returning from work near Kasr Al Ainy Hospital in Cairo and was disappeared until 9 April 2020, during which he was subjected to physical and psychological torture, according to the two organisations’ report. The report also cited the detention of Anas Hassan Ahmed Shafik Mohamed Abu Zekry, a university student born in 1995, who was arrested on 25 September 2017 on Maher Badawi Street in Ain Shams, Cairo governorate. He was subjected to enforced disappearance until he was brought before the prosecution in November 2017, and was subjected to enforced disappearance again from March to July 2020. You can view the ten cases here.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued its opinion, in which it found that all ten individuals were deprived of the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, which constitutes a violation of Article 9 (4) of the Covenant. The group also found that the arrest and pretrial detention of the ten people contravene Articles 3 and 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9 of the Covenant, and Principles 11, 37 and 38 of the Covenant; accordingly, the Working Group concluded that the arrest and subsequent detention of all ten individuals is arbitrary under Category I.
The Working Group also concluded that the violations of the ten individuals’ right to a fair trial and due process were of such gravity as to give their deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character under Category III as well.
In concluding its opinion, the Working Group noted that this opinion is only one of many issued in recent years in which it found that the Egyptian authorities are violating their international human rights obligations, and that it is concerned that there is a systemic problem with arbitrary detention in Egypt which, if it continues, may amount to a serious violation of international law.
For their part, the Committee for Justice and the Egyptian Front said that the authorities in Egypt have become addicted to a security approach to all the social, economic and political problems they face, which has resulted in thousands of people being arbitrarily detained, calling for immediate and rapid action to confront this systematic phenomenon that has spread in Egypt since the events of 2013.
