20 May 2024
AFTE condemns the enforced disappearance of activist “Mahmoud Mohamed,” known as the
“T-shirt detainee"”, following the Ministry of Interior’s failure to enforce the release ruling issued
on 23 April, as yesterday, the Head of El-Khanka Police Station informed the lawyers of
Mahmoud Mohamed’s defense team said he was not detained at the station.
This comes against the backdrop of The Criminal Court decision to postpone the hearing of
Mahmoud Mohamed’s case until the 26th of June 2024. Meanwhile, Mohamed was released on
a financial guarantee of 10,000 Egyptian Pounds following the court’s session on the 23rd of
April 2024. Since then, the Ministry of Interior has failed to enforce the court’s decision and
Mahmoud Mohamed has been transferred to several detention centers affiliated with the
Ministry of Interior; starting with the jail in the 15th of May area in Helwan at the end of last
April, then Al-Marg Police Station, where the report of the incident for which Mohamed was
detained was filed, but the station refused to receive him. Mohamed was then transferred to
Ain Shams police station, then again to the 15 th of May jail -known as El Takhshiba (The cell),
and finally ended up at El-Khanka police station, where he was transferred on the 5th of May.
Mohamed’s arrest dates back to the 30th of August 2023 at a security checkpoint in Giza
governorate, in the enforcement of an absentia verdict issued against him on the 26th of
February 2018, by the Emergency State Security Criminal Court, for life imprisonment in Public
Prosecution Case No. 37883 of 2017, on charges of possession of explosive substances.
On the 5 th September 2023, Mohamed was presented to the East Cairo Public Prosecution
Office, where he signed a request for retrial proceedings and since then, he has been detained
pending his retrial sessions until the North Cairo Criminal Court decided to release him on the
23 th of April, while postponing his trial session to the 26th of June 2024.
Mohamed suffers from severe deterioration of his health and physical conditions due to a
surgery he underwent in Badr Prison, from which he has not fully recovered, as well as mobility
challenges as a result of two operations requiring complete rest, which were performed on him
in 2016. As a result of these health conditions, the court issued its decision to release him.
AFTE stresses the need for the Public Prosecution to play its role in investigating the
involvement of the Ministry of Interior in the crime of unlawful detention and enforced
disappearance of an Egyptian citizen and the failure to enforce the court’s decision to release
him, as the defense lawyers for Mahmoud Mohamed submitted a report to the Public
Prosecutor (No. 30041 of 2024, Petitions of the Public Prosecutor).
AFTE holds the Ministry of Interior and the Head of El-Khanka Police Station fully responsible
for the physical and psychological safety of the activist Mahmoud Mohamed, and demands that
the Ministry of Interior complied with the court’s decision to release him, immediately revealing his
whereabouts, and enable him to contact his family and lawyer.
