{"id":16632,"date":"2026-04-08T14:36:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16632"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:55:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:55:36","slug":"egyptians-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/egyptians-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordered to Leave, but Not Released: Egyptians Detained in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since late February, Egyptian workers in Iraq, particularly in the governorates of Baghdad, Karbala, Nasiriyah and Wasit, have been subjected to detention, arrest and confinement inside premises belonging to the Residency Directorate of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. Despite their payment of the fines for violating residency, which amounted to about 150,000 Iraqi dinars (equivalent to EGP 6,233), they had not been released at the time of writing this report, on the pretext of the war and the <\/span>closure<\/span><\/a> of Iraqi airspace. Their mobile phones were also confiscated, and they have been prevented from communicating with their families for about a month, as a number of the detainees’ relatives confirmed to Zawia3. <\/span><\/p>\n

This coincided with intensive security campaigns against foreign nationals whose residency permits in Iraq had expired or who had violated residency conditions, in addition to those who had previously entered on visit or tourist visas and were unable to pay the fees for obtaining a work residency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aya Mamdouh<\/b>, the wife of Egyptian construction worker Mohamed Ibrahim Abdallah (27 years old), from Abu Kabir district in Sharqia Governorate, says that her husband travelled to Iraq last year on a visit visa whose <\/span>duration<\/span><\/a> of stay does not exceed three months from the date of entry, to look for a job opportunity. He intended to regularise his status and complete the procedures for obtaining a work residency, but the war took him by surprise, and he and a friend of his were detained in Baghdad in late February.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aya received a phone call informing her that her husband had been transferred to a detention centre in Al-Nasr district. The family’s last direct contact with him was nearly 20 days ago, and the family has not been able to contact him up to this moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells Zawia3: “Although his Egyptian colleagues informed us that a decision had been issued to deport him, we do not know when he will be released. We contacted the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad and received no response.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The same suffering is being lived by <\/span>Mayada Aziz,<\/b> the wife of an Egyptian plasterer named Abdel Hamid Mohamed El-Sayed (35 years old), who supports three children. He travelled to Iraq last year on a visit visa, hoping to regularise his status later, but he was unable to raise the amount needed for the residency fees because daily-wage work was irregular. On 10 March, Iraqi police forces raided his workplace in Nasiriyah Governorate, and he was arrested along with a number of foreign workers and handed over to a detention centre on a charge of violating residency conditions. Since she was informed of the news, Mayada has been unable to contact her husband at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells Zawia3: “I resorted to writing in one of the social media groups of the Egyptian community in Iraq, and an Iraqi lawyer contacted me and promised to follow up on his case, on condition that I transfer his fees and the value of the violation fine to him. I complied, hoping that my husband would be released and his status regularised in Iraq, or that he would be deported, but no progress has been made in the case”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mayada stresses that her family is living in difficult humanitarian and economic conditions after losing contact with the detained husband, appealing to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to act quickly to end the detainees’ crisis, by regularising their status or returning them to Egypt.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two stories resemble what daily-wage worker Hossam Ali Rabie Morsi (25 years old), from Beni Mazar district in Minya Governorate, went through. His fianc\u00e9e, Shahinaz Hassan, tells Zawia3 that he was arrested in the capital, Baghdad, together with one of his Egyptian friends, as soon as the two of them left their accommodation, in late February.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before that, Hossam worked irregularly in the construction sector, and his residency had expired before he and his friend were arrested. After that, an Iraqi lawyer appointed by the family paid the prescribed financial fines, and a decision was issued to deport the two of them to Egypt, which has not happened to this day; their detention has continued, and they have been allowed to contact their families only once.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells Zawia3: “We were told that the deportation decision was not implemented because of the closure of airspace, despite the procedures having been completed, and we do not know when it will be implemented, or why the available alternatives, such as overland travel through Jordan, are not being used.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She explains that her fianc\u00e9 was preparing to return to Egypt as the scheduled date of their wedding approached, and his detention caused great disappointment, especially since he is the main breadwinner of his family, calling for swift intervention to speed up the procedures for his return to Egypt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their testimonies match what Ibrahim Barakat recounts. Unable to find a job in the field of accounting in Egypt, he travelled to Iraq a year and two months ago to work as a daily-wage labourer in the construction sector, but he was unable to raise the fees needed to obtain residency because of their high cost, which pushed him and many others into legal violations that end with paying the fines due, followed by their deportation or the regularisation of their status.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “There is a state of anger among Egyptians in Iraq because large numbers of us continue to be detained without being deported, at the same time as the war, and because the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad has not intervened to resolve the crisis. There were moves to organise protest stands in front of the embassy to demand the release of the detainees, but the Egyptian workers backed down from that because of the current security conditions”..<\/span><\/p>\n

Ibrahim hopes there will be coordination between the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the concerned bodies to obtain lists of the names of detainees in the various Iraqi governorates, in preparation for obtaining security approvals from the Jordanian side to facilitate their deportation to Egypt via Jordan overland, then the port of Aqaba, arriving at Nuweiba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zawia3 obtained a list of 21 Egyptian citizens and copies of their passports, whose relatives confirmed that they remain in detention in Iraq for violating the residency system. They are: Ali Adel Ali Desouky El-Wardany, Mohamed Mosaad Ibrahim Ahmed El-Maghraby, Reda El-Sayed Hussein Mohamed, Abdel Hamid Mohamed El-Sayed, El-Sayed Mohamed El-Sayed Omran, Hamada Hassan Shalqamy Abdel Razek, Ahmed Saber Abdel Galil Hassan, Farag Sheikhoun Farag Mohamed, Abdel Hamid Saeed Saber Helal, Mohamed Salem Salem Sobh, Medhat Salem Salem Sobh, Fawzy Abdallah Farhat, Hossam Ali Rabie Morsi, Mohamed Ezzat Ahmed Ahmed, Mahmoud Gomaa Nassef, Ibrahim Abul Magd Ahmed El-Ashmawy, El-Sayed Gamal El-Sayed Ali Saber, Mahmoud Mohamed Ibrahim, Fawzy Emad El-Din Zaki Farhat.<\/p>\n

This is in addition to two Egyptian workers whose colleagues reported their arrest and detention, without being able to learn all their identification details: Taher Abu Zeid and Hamada Hamdy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Egypt, their families are living in a state of severe anxiety, in the absence of any confirmed information about their health or legal situation and the lack of direct channels of communication with them. The families who contacted Zawia3 are calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene urgently and coordinate with the Iraqi authorities to release the detainees and regularise their status, or to deport them and provide safe routes for their return to their homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>EGP 165,000 to Return to Cairo: Gulf Egyptians Between a Ticket They Do Not Have and Work They May Lose<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/b>Fraud networks and high fees<\/b><\/h1>\n

In this context, <\/span>Mozahem Al-Huwait<\/b>, a leading figure in the Iraqi State Administration Coalition and spokesman for the Arab tribes in Iraq, stresses the importance of Egyptian labour in Iraq, affirming his rejection of the worsening of their humanitarian conditions and pointing to his contacts with government bodies to review the detainees’ situation, so that those against whom there are no security suspicions are released, and those who face no violations are allowed to return to their work inside Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains to Zawia3 that part of the crisis is due to a number of Egyptian workers having been subjected to fraud by illegal networks that include Iraqi and Egyptian elements, which brought them to Iraq on visas unsuitable for work, in exchange for sums of money, without the knowledge of the Iraqi authorities, considering that “these workers are victims and do not bear responsibility for what happened, and the parties involved in these operations must be held accountable”.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “I have called on the Iraqi government to grant these workers legal residency, especially those who do not face charges, in addition to working to uncover the identity of the companies and individuals involved in the fraud operations.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding the high residency fees, Al-Huwait calls on his country’s government to take into account the economic circumstances of foreign workers, affirming that there are efforts to push the government towards reducing fees and fines, especially in light of the difficult economic conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “I hope the status of Egyptian workers inside Iraq will be settled instead of deporting them, given the depth of relations between the Egyptian and Iraqi peoples. We are currently holding contacts with the concerned bodies, including “the Ministry of Interior and the security services, to work on finding solutions to the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

The leading figure in the Iraqi State Administration Coalition denies that the closure of airspace is an obstacle to implementing deportation decisions, explaining that Iraq has multiple land crossings that can be used to transport deportees through neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there is no official statistic showing the size of the Egyptian community in Iraq, the Directorate of Residency Affairs at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior confirmed<\/a> in 2023 that the largest community in its country is the Syrian one, followed by the Egyptian. Iraqi Ministry of Labour estimates<\/a> indicate that there are about 40,000 Egyptian workers on its territory, working in various fields such as medicine, engineering, construction and self-employment, represented by poultry farming, as well as local companies and health care institutions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce in Baghdad estimated<\/a>, in 2017, the number of Egyptian workers who had arrived in the country in less than a year at about 8,000 Egyptians, distributed between Baghdad, the cities of the south and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, most of whom work in construction and excavation, among them engineers and university graduates. The Iraqi government had requested<\/a> in 2014 to be supplied with about 80,000 Egyptian workers, but the request did not receive an Egyptian response.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr Ayman Zohry, head of the Egyptian Society for Migration Studies, explains that the presence of Egyptian labour in Iraq historically extends back to earlier periods, particularly during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, when Egyptians played a pivotal role in supporting the Iraqi labour market amid the absence of large numbers of local workers because of conscription. However, it declined after the American invasion in 2003, and with the escalation of regional turmoil, which led to a contraction of regular job opportunities and opened the way to irregular, low-cost patterns of labour.<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains to Zawia3 that Egyptian workers’ resort to countries witnessing armed conflicts is linked to the equation of risk versus return, as wages in these environments are higher than in stable countries, which pushes some to bear the risks despite their awareness of the danger of the situation. This labour is outside the umbrella of official protection, which multiplies their exposure to legal and humanitarian risks.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Amid Rubble, Bombardment and Hunger: Egyptians Stranded in Gaza<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/h1>\n

Alternative routes for return<\/b><\/h1>\n

With the growing numbers of foreign workers, the Iraqi Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs <\/span>called on<\/span><\/a> foreign workers violating the residency law to correct their status, announcing the regularisation of the status of 5,600 workers, and <\/span>gave them a deadline<\/span><\/a> until 31 December 2024 to avoid paying the fine, which is no less than 100,000 dinars and no more than 500,000 dinars, followed by removal or expulsion from the country. During 2025, it removed nearly 40,000 violators of residency regulations. Despite that, many Egyptian workers were <\/span>unable<\/span><\/a> to regularise their status because of the high <\/span>fees<\/span><\/a> for the residency permit.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the beginning of this year, the security services in Iraq launched intensive campaigns to apprehend <\/span>workers<\/span><\/a> violating residency conditions, among them Egyptian workers, who were supposed to be<\/span> sent back<\/span><\/a> to Egypt after paying a fine of 100,000 Iraqi dinars and booking their own flight ticket, provided they held a valid passport. But with the outbreak of the regional war, the workers who were arrested over the months of February and March were surprised to find themselves detained indefinitely, despite having paid the prescribed fines and despite the issuance of decisions to remove them, as several Egyptian and Iraqi sources confirmed to Zawia3.<\/span><\/p>\n

We put the question to Ambassador Haddad Abdel Tawab El-Gohary, Assistant Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs and Egyptians Abroad, who affirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs deals with the complaints of Egyptian citizens abroad through direct official channels, stressing that any citizen with a problem must go to the Consular Department at its headquarters in the Isis Building in the Garden City area, where complaints are received and examined and each case is studied separately, based on the documents submitted, allowing the competent bodies to assess the situation and take the appropriate measures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regarding the situation of Egyptians in Iraq amid the disruption of air traffic, he tells Zawia3: “There are alternative routes that have actually been used, as a large number of citizens have been able to leave Iraq via Jordan, and then travel to Egypt either through Amman airport or via the port of Aqaba.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The Assistant Foreign Minister stresses that the government provides support and backing to citizens through official mechanisms, calling on those affected to go directly to the competent consular bodies to present their problems and obtain the necessary support.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Ambassador Rakha Ahmed Hassan, former Assistant Foreign Minister and member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, explains that dealing with the situation of Egyptians detained abroad begins through the Consular Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by submitting documented requests that include the details and names of the detainees, so that the Egyptian embassy in the country concerned can be contacted and the circumstances of each case ascertained, to verify the reasons for the detention, whether they are related to entering the country without appropriate visas, residing without legal permits, or the existence of legal obligations such as lawsuits or debts, which may affect the possibility of including them on the lists of those departing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He tells Zawia3: “The disruption of air traffic in conflict areas does not represent an obstacle to implementing deportation decisions, given the existence of alternatives, such as travel via land crossings, which is usually available for cases that do not face legal impediments.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He affirms that countries witnessing conflicts or wars tend to take exceptional measures, including reducing irregular labour or labour without official contracts, which are the categories most likely to be dispensed with amid declining economic activity. He attributes the movement of Egyptian workers to those countries to economic pressures and the need for work, which pushes many to accept the risk despite official warnings against travelling to unstable areas, in pursuit of an income, especially given the limited opportunities in the local market.<\/span><\/p>\n

For her part, MP Rawya Mokhtar, deputy chair of the Manpower Committee of the House of Representatives, affirms to Zawia3 that the Egyptian state handles the situation of citizens abroad, especially in times of crises and wars, through exceptional measures taken according to the nature of each situation, noting that there are precedents in which the state dealt with similar situations through coordination with Egyptian embassies abroad to secure the return of citizens or evacuate them when necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She says: “The state does not abandon its citizens abroad, and action is taken to ensure their safety “in accordance with the circumstances available, whether by returning them to the country or by taking appropriate measures to protect them, affirming readiness to receive any additional information or data on the cases of Egyptian workers detained in Iraq, and pledging to follow up on the crisis with members of the Manpower Committee and to ascertain the truth of the situation and its developments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zawia3 contacted MP Dr Reham Abul Hassan, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, who showed interest in the crisis and pledged to convey its details and the list of names of the detained Egyptian citizens to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Badr Abdelatty, on the sidelines of his meeting with the committee. Later, the MP confirmed that the Foreign Minister is currently following the crisis personally, and that he promised to instruct Egypt’s embassy in Baghdad to follow up on the matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

With US President Donald Trump announcing, on 8 April, his agreement to halt the strikes against Iran for two weeks, the hopes of the families and of the Egyptian workers in Iraq grew for urgent Egyptian diplomatic action that would ensure the fate of the detainees among them is revealed, secure their communication with their relatives, and then settle their legal fate, whether by regularising their status or sending them back to the country via safe routes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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