Press Release: On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance: The
“Stop Enforced Disappearance” Campaign publishes the third annual report of the
campaign, bringing the total cases documented since June 30th 2013 to 1520 cases.
August 30 th , 2018
The Stop Forced Disappearance Campaign today released its third annual report since its launch
in 2015, covering 230 new cases of enforced disappearance documented between August 15 th
2017 and August 1 st 2018, with a list of the details of those cases attached to the report, while the
campaign monitored about 64 other cases but was unable to document them as a result of
difficulties in communicating with their families or because of the disruption of work because of
security risks to which the human rights worker was subjected repeatedly to during his work.
The campaign also called on victims of enforced disappearance to blog about this crime and its
victims and to highlight the suffering of their relatives who are searching for their fate.
In its third annual report, the Stop Enforced Disappearance Campaign documented 230
cases of enforced disappearances involving 4 women, of which 32 cases remain under
enforced disappearance, 51 cases remain in pre-trial detention after appearing before the
prosecution, 10 cases have been released on pending cases, 11were released without
being brought before a judicial body, and there are 126 unknown cases, to whom they
were referred to as N / A.
The most important characteristic of enforced disappearances in that period is the use of
such crime against journalists, human rights defenders and activists, including from civil
society, who then appear before the State Security Prosecution on the basis of fabricated
cases.
Victims of enforced disappearance have traditionally been subjected to torture and ill-
treatment while in detention at the headquarters of the national security centers,
according to victims’ testimonies, to force them to give information, to confess to crimes
or to abuse them and then to put them in prisons, and to detain them for long periods of
time as a form of punishment.
The campaign also documented 8 cases of enforced disappearances during the
implementation of their release procedures.
Based on the location where victims appear after their disappearance; The Supreme State
Security Prosecution represented the highest percentage where victims appeared to be,
with a total of 38% of the total number.
In the second place comes the public prosecution with a total of 24 cases, followed by the
police departments with a total of 8 cases, and official prisons with a total of 6 cases.
The Ministry of the Interior's press releases, both written and recorded, are also an
important source of information for the families of the victims, as some of the forcibly
disappeared are shown in the videos broadcasted by the Ministry of the Interior or the
Ministry of Defense, through which the victims appear to confess to crimes related to
overthrowing the regime, belonging to a terrorist group and other charges.
Those data and media materials revealed the fate of 4 cases of the total number of victims
who appeared.
While one police station, one security department and one national security headquarters
were the locations for one person to appear each.
This report comes two months after the re-election of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi for a
second term in June 2018 and the appointment of Major General Mahmoud Tawfiq as
Minister of Interior instead of Majdi Abdel Ghaffar. Both were responsible for the
national security sector, which is primarily responsible for committing the crime of
enforced disappearance.
The first term of presidency has witnessed widespread practice of the crime of enforced
disappearance, where the campaign recorded high rates of the number of victims of
enforced disappearance, over the past four years, which refers to the release of the hands
of the security services in the practice of that crime without accountability.
The Campaign to Stop Enforced Disappearances believes that the continued crime of
enforced disappearance at the observed and documented rates in all governorates of the
Republic, over five years, may amount to characterizing it as a crime against humanity.
The Campaign to Stop Enforced Disappearance has issued several reports on the crime of
enforced disappearance in Egypt, during the period from June 30 th 2013 to August 1 st 2018
included a total of 1520 cases of enforced disappearance, monitored and documented in 3 reports
issued.
The first report covered the period from June 30 th 2013 to the August 31 st 2016, monitoring 912
cases. The second report covered the period from August 2016 to August 2017 monitoring 378
cases. The Third covered the period from August 2017 to August 2018, monitoring 230 cases.
Among the recommendations included in the report:
– To disclose the location of detention of the disappeared persons whose names are
mentioned in the report and the reports of the National Council for Human Rights and the
reports of the "Stop Enforced Disappearance" Campaign and Egyptian and international
human rights organizations.
– Criminalization of enforced disappearance in the Egyptian penal code as a crime that
does not fall under statute of limitations with a punishment in accordance with the gravity
of such violation.
– Amend the Penal Code to adopt the definition of torture in the 1984 Convention against
Torture.
– Accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance for the year 2006.
– Accession to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court for 1998.
– Accession to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, 2002.