Lawyer Ziad al-Uleimi was walking to his car in the Cairo residential suburb of Maadi in the early hours of June 25 when he was abducted. Witnesses say the former member of parliament was taken by National Security officers. Uleimi resurfaced hours later at the State Security offices, where he had been detained pending an investigation. 

Uleimi was a founding member of both the liberal Social Democratic Party and the January 25 Youth Revolutionary Coalition, which negotiated the way forward for Egypt with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces during and after the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Now he faces charges of "helping a terrorist organization further its interests" and "spreading false news," according to independent newspaper Mada Masr. Prosecutors ordered on June 26 that Uleimi be detained for 15 days after he was questioned about his political affiliations and his plans to form a new coalition.

The Interior Ministry released a video online shortly after Uleimi's arrest, accusing him and seven other secular activists and government critics — arrested in predawn raids on their homes June 25 — of "entering into a conspiracy alongside exiled Brotherhood leaders aimed at toppling the state and its institutions." The video, widely circulated on social media, shows security forces raiding company offices and confiscating computers and cash. 

The video claimed that illicit financial inflows, allegedly transferred by exiled Brotherhood leaders, amounted to 250 million Egyptian pounds (around $15 million). The funds would have "financed activities against the state" to coincide with the anniversary of the June 30 protests, according to the Interior Ministry.