CAIRO: Authorities haven’t revealed the whereabouts of a detained blogger 21 days after he disappeared, while questions surround the detention of an activist arrested Monday while giving out leaflets.
Mohamed Adel, a 22-year-old blogger and IT student, was bundled into a car by roughly 30 plain-clothed men while in a Downtown Cairo coffee shop last month on Nov. 20, according to an eyewitness.
A formal arrest warrant was issued four days after Adel’s disappearance but his exact whereabouts remain unknown.
His father Adel Fahmy told Daily News Egypt that he has received information that Adel is in the Tora Farm Prison.
“I received information that visitors at Tora Farm Prison had seen Mohamed being taken out of a prisoners’ truck and into the prison, Fahmy said.
“I went to the prison on the morning of the first day of the Eid [Monday] with clothes and food for Mohamed. At 1:30 pm they told me that they where not at liberty to give me any information about Mohamed because his case is handled by State Security. They also refused to accept the clothes and food I had brought for him.
Fahmy said that Adel’s friends had revealed verbal promises from the General Attorney that he would be released on the second day of Eid.
Adel’s lawyers have lodged several complaints with the public prosecution office demanding that they reveal his whereabouts.
According to Fahmy, lawyers will go to the Prison Affairs Office and public prosecution office to press for confirmation of Adel’s whereabouts and his release.
Ambiguity also surrounds another detainee: Nour Hamdy.
Hamdy, a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, was arrested in Imbaba on Monday together with another activist Ahmed Ashraf, who was subsequently released.
On Tuesday the Imbaba public prosecution office detained Hamdy for four days.
“When Hamdy’s lawyers went to the public prosecution office to lodge a petition for his release a day before the end of the four-day detention period they were told by a police officer that Hamdy had been given a 15-day detention period, Ikhwan Online editor Ahmed Abdel-Fatah told Daily News Egypt.
“They did not however receive official confirmation of this, and the period of detention Hamdy received remains unknown, he added.
