Egypt’s Al-Sisi Regime Is Still “Disappearing” Researchers Who Oppose Its Crimes
Last week it was announced that an Italian court will put Egyptian state security agents on trial for the 2016 kidnapping and murder of labor researcher Giulio Regeni. For years, Egypt's military regime has refused to cooperate with the investigation — and in recent months it has continued to “disappear” researchers who defend workers’ and women’s rights.
Ahmed Samir Abdelhay Ali, a graduate student and researcher, is currently being held in indefinite pretrial detention in Cairo. (Facebook)
It is three months since reproductive rights researcher Ahmed Samir Abdelhay Ali presented himself at the fifth district police station in central Cairo. He is still yet to be freed.
Samir, a twenty-nine-year-old graduate student at Vienna’s Central European University, had traveled from the Austrian capital to Egypt for his school’s Christmas break, where he was stopped and interrogated by airport police at Sharm El Sheikh International Airport. According to sources close to the case, this was a frequent occurrence. But five weeks later, masked troops from the SWAT-like Central Security Forces entered Samir’s home without a warrant at 2 AM.
The officers searched the Samir family home, made copies of their identification cards, and took footage from two building security cameras. Samir was instructed to present himself to the National Security Police at the Fifth Settlement police station in Cairo. On February 1, Samir appeared at the station accompanied by his father, who waited while his son was taken into the back, according to Samir’s partner, Souheila Yildiz. “He entered and he never came out,” says Yildiz.
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