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.
“Tarek’s house was raided, and he got arrested without being informed of the reasons for his arrest, nor did he see an arrest warrant. His mother, even now, still doesn’t understand why he was arrested,” Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer and the director of ANHRI, told Al-Monitor.
Tarek could potentially face charges of working for a banned organization, but until now the charges haven’t been revealed, and it’s difficult to speculate if freelancing for ANHRI was the reason he was taken. So far, the only available information from lawyers at ANHRI is that he will be in Tora prison until March 5.
