After nine days of reported enforced disappearance, around 25 persons who were arrested from their households earlier this month appeared Saturday in Al-Montazah Police station in Alexandria, according to the Egyptian Centre for economic and Social Rights (ECESR).
Nineteen of the 25 appeared after the police previously refused to disclose their places and had even denied arresting them.
The 19 were reportedly arrested on 4 and 5 February and were forcibly disappeared afterwards. However, they reappeared Saturday and were charged with belonging to an outlawed group, having fireworks, and Molotov cocktails, and setting fire to ATMs and to vehicles belonging to the police forces.
The prosecution decided to arrest them for 15 days pending investigations.
The other six, who reportedly disappeared earlier in February as well, appeared shortly after the first 19 in the police station but, unlike the previous group, they were released.
According to a report from Amnesty International in 2015, over 41,000 people were arrested, indicted, or sentenced as part of the government’s suppression of political opponents and activists since the 25 January Revolution in 2011.
Human Rights Watch reported last week that 22,000 people, including activists and journalists, have been arrested since July 2014 for stating their opposition to the government.
According to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, there were at least 215 cases of enforced disappearances across the country in August and September 2015. During the first eight months of 2015, 1,250 cases were recorded with 1,411 cases in the first 10 months. Only 332 of 1,411 cases have been resolved when the location of those disappeared was revealed.
