The Egyptian lawyer and human rights defender Youssef Mansour appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) after being forcibly disappeared for 48 hours.
The SSSP ordered his pre-trial detention for 15 days, pending investigation in Case No.330/2022 for allegedly joining an illegal group and spreading false news, a charge usually used by the Egyptian regime against its opponents.
The Egyptian security forces arrested Manour from his family house on March 24, 2022, and took him to unknown detention centre.
Since Abdel Fattah El-Sisi assumed power in the country in 2013, the Egyptian authorities have been waging an unprecedented crackdown on dissidents and critics, arresting thousands in politically motivated arrests, many of whom have been forcibly disappeared or held without trial for years on baseless terrorism-related charges, in very poor detention conditions.
Those disappeared are then convicted and sentenced in grossly unfair mass trials, in some cases before military courts.
The UN Committee against Torture has earlier concluded that enforced disappearance and torture are “a systematic practice in Egypt.”
