CAIRO (Middle East Eye/MEMO) – The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) says Egyptian authorities held the body of a prisoner for six years without telling his family he had died.
Mohamed Jumaa Youssef Afifi, 52, died at the National Security Headquarters in Cairo in December 2015 after he was tortured so badly he had a heart attack.
Rather than admitting that he had been killed, prison authorities continued to claim that Mohamed was alive and failed to inform his family even though they filed several lawsuits to find out where he was.
Mohamed actually died less than a month after being arrested.
The Egyptian authorities have a long record of forcibly disappearing and torturing people who criticize the government or anyone they perceive to be political opponents.
Even children are forcibly disappeared and tortured in custody.
There are no exact figures on the number of people who have been forcibly disappeared in Egypt due to the clandestine nature of the crime.
In 2020 The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms estimated that at least 2,723 people had been forcibly disappeared by Egyptian security forces since 2015.
The practice, which leaves prisoners’ families in agony as they are unsure of the fate of their loved ones, is becoming increasingly common.
In another development, Egypt’s prosecution ordered the release of Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath on Monday, after almost two and a half years in detention, a judiciary source told the AFP news agency.
The source said that Shaath, the co-founder of Egypt’s pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and son of veteran Palestinian politician Nabil Shaath, “has been released by the prosecution”. There were no further details.
His wife, French national Celine Lebrun, told the news agency: “I heard about the decision but according to what I know, he is not yet out.”
Lebrun, who was deported from Egypt shortly after her husband’s arrest, added that she would release a statement once he is confirmed to be free.