CAIRO — Egyptian economist Ayman Hadhoud,
who was allegedly detained in early February, has died, his brother told AFP on
Sunday, as police denied “forcibly disappearing” him.
اضافة اعلان
“According to official records in the prosecution,
(Ayman) died on March 5,” his brother Omar Hadhoud, a lawyer, told AFP. “We got
a call last night to retrieve the body from the Abbasiya” mental health
facility.
The interior ministry meanwhile said Sunday that
Hadhoud was placed in a psychiatric facility on February 6, following reports
he attempted to break into an apartment in central
Cairo.
But his brother disputed this account of events,
saying: “If he was breaking and entering, there would have been a court case.”
“He disappeared on February 5. On February 8, a
policeman from Al-Amiriya police station told us to come collect Ayman,” Omar
Hadhoud said.
“The truth was they wanted to interrogate us,” he
continued, adding that when his older brother Adel went to collect him, he was
told Ayman would be held for a few more days.
“And then they completely denied detaining him.”
In the following weeks, the family received contradictory
information from officials, before being notified unofficially in early April
that Ayman was in the Abbasiya mental health facility in eastern Cairo.
Ayman Hadhoud was a member of the
liberal Reform and Development Party and an economic policy advisor to the party’s founder Mohamed
Sadat, the nephew of former president Anwar Sadat.
Mohamed Sadat has recently emerged as an unofficial
negotiator on behalf of figures imprisoned under the administration of Egyptian
President
Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
Rights groups say Egypt is holding some 60,000
political prisoners, while Sisi and his supporters insist there are none in the
country.
Egypt has recently freed several prominent political
detainees, raising hopes for an easing of a sweeping crackdown on dissent.
But for rights activists, repression remains
“systematic” and there is no relief in sight.
In late 2021, Amnesty International and around 20
other groups condemned the Egyptian government’s “abysmal human rights record”.
The crackdown has left “peaceful activists, human rights
defenders, lawyers, academics, and journalists detained for exercising their
rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association”, the
rights groups said.
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