Teenage activist, Ahmed Al-Masry was allegedly held against his will for several hours in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The NGO Al-Nedeem has previously established that Al-Masry was the victim of torture following his detention in 2011.
“I was on my way home after the protest at 1.30am. There was someone following me so I decided to take a taxi from Tahrir Square near Talaat Harb Street. When I got in, this man came and sat next to the driver,” Al-Masry said.
Instead of taking Talaat Harb Street, the taxi driver took a detour and then suddenly stopped and two people entered the backseat of the car on either side. At that point Al-Masry sent out a message to his friends in the square telling them that he was kidnapped. Al-Masry said the men wrapped his hands with plastic rope and covered his eyes with his scarf.
At around 2am on Saturday, messages reporting that Al-Masry had been kidnapped were spread on social media.
Al-Masry said that he had been sent text messages threatening him to stop protesting, especially against the Ministry of Interior. Al-Masry was receiving threats for about a week and then about 15 days ago, he stopped receiving them.
According to Al-Masry one of the men in the taxi told him, “didn’t I tell you to be afraid for yourself and to stay away from the Ministry of Interior. Haven’t you had enough?”
Al-Masry was released last June from prison. He was detained in October 2011 after taking part in a protest. During detention, he was tortured and sexually abused and needed psychological treatment after his release.
Al-Masry remained in the taxi from 1.30 to 4.00am on Saturday. Then, “they threw me under Al-Gala’a Bridge,” he said.
Al-Masry said that the taxi driver didn’t say a single word the whole time.
Mohamed Abdul Aziz, a human rights lawyer, took to Twitter to encourage people to send telegraphs of complaint to the presidency, the prosecutor general, and the minister of interior telling them what happened to Al-Masry.
Al-Masry said that the men did not hurt him and that they just kept threatening him. He added that the threats which he described as “terrorism” didn’t work. “I am not afraid at all. I went to a protest yesterday,” he said.
