EGYPT: The disappearance of Walid Fouad Al Ghunaimi AL MAGHAZI submitted to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances

 وليد فؤاد الغنيمي المغازي

On 4 October 2022, Najda for Human Rights and Alkarama launched an urgent appeal to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances regarding the situation of Mr Walid Fouad Al Ghunaimi AL MAGHAZI who was arrested in front of his home on 17 September 2022 at 1:00 am by several members of the Egyptian security services. 

This is the fourth case of enforced disappearance submitted by Alkarama to the Working Group since the beginning of the year, although in reality many cases are never reported to NGOs. All the disappearances brought to the attention of the UN mechanisms follow the same pattern: the victims arrested without any explanation by the security forces are taken to unknown destinations, held incommunicado for varying lengths of time, always beyond the legal time limit for police custody, and systematically tortured.

Many victims of abduction by the police or the army have also been summarily executed, particularly in the Sinai region, and presented as "terrorists shot by the security services" in armed confrontations.

On 17 September 2022 at 1am, Al Maghazi was arrested by several security agents in front of his home in the Giza governorate (southwest of Cairo). According to eyewitnesses, several agents, armed and in plain clothes, were waiting for him there. When the victim arrived, he was brutally arrested, handcuffed without any explanation and forced into one of their vehicles before being taken to an unknown destination.   

After the victim disappeared, his wife went to the local police station to inquire about his fate. However, the police, who denied her detention, refused to register her complaint. The wife therefore turned to the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor General of Giza, to no avail. 

On behalf of the victim's family, Najda for Human Rights and Alkarama urgently appealed to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances to determine Mr Al Maghazi's whereabouts and to immediately place him under the protection of the law. 

Egypt ratified the Convention against Torture on 25 June 1986 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 14 January 1982, thereby committing itself to its principles.