GENEVA (Dispatches) – The UN human rights office calls on Egypt to free a prominent blogger, lawyer and journalist allegedly mistreated in custody who are among several thousand people detained since street protests began a month ago.
Officials at Egypt’s interior ministry were not immediately available for comment. The state prosecutor’s office said in late September that it had questioned up to 1,000 suspects who took part in the demonstrations.
About 3,400 people have been arrested since protests began, including about 300 who have since been released, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent body.
"Unfortunately such arrests are continuing, and have included a number of well-known and respected civil society figures,” UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing.
Protests against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo and other cities have followed online calls for demonstrations against alleged government corruption.
Sisi has been facing international condemnation for a crackdown on civil society groups since he took power in 2014, a year after a military coup spearheaded by him toppled the country’s first ever democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.
Shamdasani said that Esraa Abdel Fattah and Alaa Abdel Fattah, who are not related and who played key roles in the 2011 uprising hat ended president Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year rule, have been detained in the recent weeks.
According to the spokeswoman, journalist and activist Esraa Abdel Fattah was arrested by plainclothes security officers in Cairo on Saturday.
Esraa was reportedly physically assaulted after she declined to unlock her mobile phone, and is currently on a hunger strike, Shamdasani added.
The blogger and software engineer Alaa Abdel Fattah was arrested on September 29, about six months after he had been released from prison after serving a five-year sentence on charges of protesting in defiance on an anti-protest law, Shamdasani said.
She added that his lawyer, Mohamed al-Baqer, was also arrested on the same day while attending the interrogation. According to the spokeswoman, the pair was subjected to physical abuse.
‘Dialog of deaf persons’
On Tuesday, the European Union’s ambassador to Egypt, Ivan Surkos, said that he had raised concerns over the arrests with the country’s Assistant Foreign Minister for Human Rights Ahmed Gamal Eddin.
"Will my messages end as (a) dialogue of deaf persons? Let’s hope not,” Surkos tweeted.