CAIRO: Activist Khaled el-Sayed has been missing for over 30 hours since he was banned from traveling to Qatar Thursday, his wife Hoda Mahmoud told The Cairo Post Friday.
On Thursday, Sayed was on his way to Doha to see his wife who is working there. Sayed’s phone was turned off twenty minutes after texting his lawyer telling him he was detained and banned from traveling, said a Friday statement by the Freedom for the Brave Campaign.
Mahmoud added that “no official statements were released to disclose Sayed’s whereabouts or say the reasons for his detention.”
“I hold the Ministry of Interior responsible for [Sayed’s] security and safety,” she wrote Thursday on her Facebook page.
The Freedom for the Brave, a human rights group dedicated to assist political detainees, issued a statement demanding authorities to announce Sayed’s detention place.
Activist Khaled el-Sayed with his wife
“After a day of Sayed’s enforced disappearance without legal basis or arrest warrant, the campaign expresses its high concern over his physical and psychological safety,” the statement added.
Anonymous airport sources gave Sayed’s lawyer Halem Henish different accounts on his whereabouts Thursday.
“After I was told that [Sayed] is at the passports [department] and that the Homeland Security apparatus will investigate him and then decide, now the passports denied saying ‘his name is not here’,” Henish wrote Thursday on his Facebook page.
Henish added that the latest available information is that “Sayed is still at the airport and has not been transferred to any place so far.”
Despite Sayed’s wife saying he was not on travel ban list, airport security sources told Aswat Masriya that he was, and that he is accused of complicity in violence-related crimes.
Activist Khaled el-Sayed
His lawyer Henish assured Sayed’s recent criminal status record was clear of any accusations, denying previous statements by “a security source to ONTV satellite channel saying that [Sayed] is wanted and on travel ban.”
The Freedom for The Brave Campaign quoted a security source as saying that Sayed was held over a “misdemeanor case.”
Sayed, a former member of the dissolved Revolution Youth Coalition, was sentenced to one month in absentia over “possession of unlicensed dart,” said his lawyer, adding that the sentence was appealed.
Activist Khaled el-Sayed
Sayed claimed he was subjected to torture in detention after he was arrested in 2014 during the third anniversary of the January 25 Revolution.
Sayed and three other co-defendants were excluded from the case and released in March 2014, said the campaign in its statement.
The Freedom for The Brave has spotted 163 enforced disappearance cases within the past two months. Activists have condemned the practice and subsequent ill treatment; many of those who went missing re-appeared with charges.
Activist Khaled el-Sayed
In this regard, the group expressed its concerns from “fabricating baseless case for [Sayed] to justify his disappearance.”
The Human Rights Department at the Ministry of Interior was not available for comment.