The undersigned human rights organizations are deeply concerned over the continued disappearance of student Ahmed Hassan Mustafa, for more than 2000 days to date. The organizations call on the Egyptian authorities to immediately disclose Mustafa’s fate and inform his family and lawyer of the place and conditions of his detention, and investigate all complaints and reports submitted by the family. We further demand the disclosure of the fate of all forcibly disappeared persons in Egypt, and for the crime of enforced disappearance to be put to an end.
Ahmed Mustafa’s case is indicative of a tragic trend that has been becoming increasingly pervasive throughout Egypt in recents years. Hundreds of families suffer and endure incessant worry about their loved ones’ lives and detention conditions as the authorities regularly fail to disclose the fate of the citizens they disappear. As recounted by Mustafa’a family, security forces arrested Ahmed Hassan Mustafa (18 years old), a first-year law student, near his home in the Moqattam district of Cairo. To this day, Mustafa’s family has not been able to learn where he is detained since contact was lost in April 2019, despite searching for him in hospitals and police stations. Mustafa’s family stated that the Moqattam Police Department refused to file a report on Mustafa’s disappearance, without giving any reasons.
Several months after Ahmed Mustafa was forcibly disappeared, his brother Mohamed Hassan Mustafa was also disappeared for three months at National Security headquarters in Abbasiya, after being arrested on 16 September 2019. Information about his whereabouts was withheld by the authorities from his family until he appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution in December of the same year on charges in Case No. 1480 of 2019 of ‘joining a terrorist group’ and ‘spreading false news’. Mohamed remained in pretrial detention until his release in June 2021.
Mustafa’s family filed several complaints and reports in May and September 2019 to the Ministry of Interior, the General Authority for Information, and the National Council for Human Rights, imploring them to disclose Ahmed’s fate, to no avail or response. The family further filed a report (No. 43776) to the Attorney General, which was not investigated. In November 2019, the family filed a lawsuit before the State Council, No. 5811 of 74 judicial year, demanding that the Ministry of Interior disclose Ahmed’s place of detention. On 14 March 2020, a court issued a ruling obligating the Ministry of Interior to disclose his fate, but the ministry did not implement the ruling. Although the Ministry of Interior appealed the ruling, the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the appeal in September 2020 and obligated the ministry to implement it.
The right to know the truth and to combat the crime of enforced disappearance are two fundamental pillars of justice and the rule of law. Under its constitution and its international agreements and treaties, Egypt is obligated to guarantee the protection of individuals from the crimes of enforced disappearance and torture. The Egyptian authorities’ persistence on maintaining a policy of denial towards the prevalence of enforced disappearance in Egypt does not negate the alarming increase in the number of forcibly disappeared citizens in recent years, who have been denied recourse to justice or due process.
We demand the Ministry of Interior and the Attorney General open an investigation into all lawsuits and complaints filed by Ahmed Hassan Mustafa’s family, and to further open investigations into all complaints and reports filed by families of the forcibly disappeared, immediately disclose their places of detention, and hold accountable those responsible for violations of their rights in accordance with national and international law.
**Signed by:**
- Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms
- El Nadeem Center
- Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
- Refugees Platform in Egypt
- Egyptian Human Rights Forum
- Egyptian Front for Human Rights
- EuroMed Rights
- Law and Democracy Support Foundation
- Sinai Foundation for Human Rights
- EgyptWide
- Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
- Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession
- Committee for Justice
- Ankh Foundation (The Arab Network for Human Rights Knowledge)
- Digital Democracy Now
- Middle East Democracy Center (MEDC)
- People in Need
- HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement