The 'enforced disappearance' of Egypt’s secular youth
While Egypt’s National Security Agency targets perceived Muslim Brotherhood supporters, secular activists are also becoming major targets.
Ahmad Tarek, 23, and his mother were at home, she said, when officers from Egypt’s National Security Agency stormed into their Cairo flat Feb. 18 and abducted him. After he was taken, Tarek’s mother rushed to the nearest police station to ask for his whereabouts, but authorities sent her away after claiming Tarek hadn't been abducted.
Al-Monitor contacted Tarek’s mother, but she declined to comment for fear of reprisal. His peers say they don't know why he would have been taken. Though he was an activist, he wasn’t a prominent one. Besides working as a freelance videographer for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) — a banned organization in Egypt — he also worked in the election campaign of lawyer Khaled Ali, a secular activist who ran for president.
