The following is based on a communication sent by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and other UN experts to the Government of Egypt on 26 March 2025. The communication remained confidential for 60 days before being made public, giving the Government time to reply. The Government replied on 26 May 2025, and their response is currently being translated.
At the time of publication, Mr. Hamza’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
This is a shorter version of the original communication.
BACKGROUND
Topic: the arrest without a warrant in September 2024 and the subsequent enforced disappearance of human rights defender Mr. Ahmed Mohamed Hamza Mohamed Hamza.
Mr. Ahmed Mohamed Hamza Mohamed Hamza is a 22-year-old human rights defender working as a volunteer with the Egyptian Red Crescent Society in the Sinai city of Arish, helping provide medical and humanitarian assistance to Gaza. He is also a student at the Arish Faculty of Computer Science.
ALLEGATIONS
On 23 September 2024, at around 11 p.m., at least seven men in civilian clothing forcibly entered Mr. Hamza’s home. They reportedly did not show any identification or arrest warrant and claimed they were members of the Arish City Police Force. They asked for Mr. Hamza. When told he was not at home, one of the men reportedly pointed a gun at one of his family members and threatened that they would arrest some of his close relatives if they did not get Mr. Hamza home. Mr. Hamza’s family called him and asked him to return. While there, the men reportedly searched the property and confiscated a computer and a hard drive.
Upon his return in the early hours of 24 September 2024, the men detained Mr. Hamza and reportedly told his family he would be back within a couple of hours, after they had interrogated him. They allegedly ordered his family not to watch them leave from the window. According to Mr. Hamza’s neighbours, the men had arrived in a civilian minibus, a white taxi and a Nissan pickup truck bearing a police logo, parked at a distance from his home.
Two hours after his arrest, Mr. Hamza’s family called his mobile phone, and a staff member at the Arish police station answered. The staff member told them that after Mr. Hamza had handed over his phone, he had been released. However, according to another detainee, Mr. Hamza was reportedly held at the Arish police station for three days before being transferred elsewhere. His fate and whereabouts remain unknown since then.
On 25 September 2024, Mr. Hamza’s family sent a letter by telegraph to the Minister of Interior, the Northern Sinai Public Prosecutor, and the head of the National Council for Human Rights, providing information about Mr. Hamza’s detention and subsequent disappearance and asking for their help in locating him. As of the time of writing, his family had not received a reply.
In the three days following Mr. Hamza’s detention, his family visited the Arish police station, the National Security Agency office in Arish and a number of official detention centres to search for him, having declared him missing following his detention. Authorities denied having any knowledge about Mr. Hamza’s deprivation of liberty or whereabouts. They reportedly did not undertake any meaningful effort to search for and to try to find him.
According to reports from a fellow detainee who was allegedly detained with him, Mr. Hamza was held at the National Security Agency headquarters in Arish in late September 2024 until early October 2024, after his alleged three-day stay at the Arish police station. During this time, Mr. Hamza was reportedly beaten by police officers. The fellow detainee reportedly lost contact with Mr. Hamza after that.
CONCERNS
In the communication, we express serious concern about the abovementioned allegations, and in particular about the lack of due process in the arrest without a warrant of Mr. Hamza, and his subsequent enforced disappearance from 24 September 2024 up to the time of writing.
If confirmed, the allegations would appear to contravene with, among other norms, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Egypt on 14 January 1982. We would like to emphasise that the absolute prohibition of enforced disappearances and the corresponding obligations to investigate them have attained the status of jus cogens.
We also wish to recall that, under international law, a deprivation of liberty (including in the form of incommunicado detention), followed by the failure or refusal to acknowledge a deprivation of liberty by State agents or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the person, are constitutive elements of an enforced disappearance. This holds true regardless of the duration of the said deprivation of liberty or concealment.
While Egypt has not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, it is bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1992 Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and the ICCPR upon which the Convention is based. We also wish to note that in Egypt’s last Universal Periodic Review on 28 January 2025, the Egyptian Government received seven recommendations to consider ratifying the Convention and to create accountability mechanisms to investigate enforced disappearance.
