Egypt: On his 25th birthday, rights organizations renew demand for disclosure of fate of Ahmed Hassan Mustafa, forcibly disappeared for over six years

The undersigned human rights organizations are gravelyconcernedby the prolonged enforced disappearance of student Ahmed Hassan Mustafa, who turns 25 on 1 September 2025. Ahmed Hassan Mustafa has been torn away from his family and loved ones for nearly six and a half years. The organizations demand the immediate disclosure of his fateto his family and lawyer in regards to his location and the circumstances of his detention, and for an investigation be conducted into all reports and complaints filed by his family. The organizations further renew their demand that the fate of all forcibly disappeared persons in Egypt bemade known without undue delay and for the authorities’ widespread practice of this cruel crime to be put to an end. 

Security forces arrested Ahmed Hassan Mustafa, a first-year law student, in early April 2019 near his home in the Mokattam district of Cairo, according to his family. To date, the family has been unable to obtain any official information regarding his whereabouts or fate, despite submitting numerous complaints and reports to the Mokattam Police Station, the Attorney General’s office, and the National Council for Human Rights. The Mokattam Police Station refused to file a report on Mustafa’s disappearance, without providing any reasons. In November 2019, his family filed lawsuit No. 5811 of the 74th Judicial Year, demanding that the Ministry of Interior disclose Mustafa’s fate. On 14 March 2020, the Administrative Court issued a ruling obligating the Ministry of Interior to disclose Mustafa's whereabouts but the Ministry refused to implement the ruling and instead appealed it. In September 2020, the Administrative Court rejected the Ministry of Interior’s appeal. The Ministry in turn ignored the court ruling and still refused  to disclose Mustafa’s fate, constituting a flagrant violation of the rule of law and a tragic affront to human dignity. 

The disappearance of Ahmed Hassan Mustafa is yet another case in the over-decade long phenomenon of widespread enforced disappearance in the country, with the Egyptian authorities often committing other crimes such as torture during a disappearance. Victims who are reappeared in the legal system are routinely subject to due process violations and unfair trials. These cases are prosecuted on the basis ofcoerced confessions extracted incommunicado, without impartial investigation, and without judicial accountability for the crimes of disappearance and torture. Amid the opacityregarding the numbers and fates of those disappeared, and thecontinued impunity of perpetrators, the suffering of thousands of families with disappeared loved ones is exacerbated. According to the Stop Enforced Disappearances Campaign, 4,253 cases of forcibly disappeared persons were documented from 2015 to the end of August 2024.

The continued disappearance of Ahmed Hassan Mustafa and hundreds of other forcibly disappeared persons, the executive authorities’ refusal to implement judicial rulings requiring the disclosure of their fates, and the judicial authorities’ failure to investigate reports and complaints submitted by their families, all constitute grave violations of Egypt’s international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The Egyptian governmenthas persistently rejected international recommendations (most recently during the United Nation Universal Periodic Review last January) to put an end to forced disappearance and reveal the fate of those disappeared. Indeed, the very existence of  any cases of disappearance is denied by the government despite the documentation of hundreds upon hundreds of cases by  local and international organizations.  All indications thus far point to the authorities’ intentto allow the crime to continue behind a wall of official obfuscation. 

In this context, the undersigned organizations call on the Egyptian authorities to:

1. Immediately reveal the whereabouts of student Ahmed Hassan Mustafa, guarantee his physical and psychological safety, and enable him to communicate immediately and without restrictions with his family and lawyer. Wefurther call for the disclosure of the fate of all persons forcibly disappeared in Egypt.

2. Implement all judicial rulings issued in Mustafa’s favor, most notably the Administrative Court ruling of 14 March 2020, obligating the Ministry of Interior to disclose his whereabouts.

3. Accede to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and align national legislation with Egypt’s international obligations in this regard.

Signatories:

Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms

Sinai Foundation for Human Rights

Stop Enforced Disappearances Campaign

El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture

Law and Democracy Support Foundation

Refugees Platform in Egypt

EgyptWide for Human Rights

Egyptian Human Rights Forum

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Egyptian Front for Human Rights

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

People in Need

Committee for Justice (CFJ)