Two men forcibly disappeared in Egypt after storming police station over Gaza blockade
Two men have been forcibly disappeared in Egypt following their alleged participation in the storming of the State Security headquarters at the Ma’asara police station in Helwan in southern Cairo in protest of Egypt's alleged complicity in the Gaza siege, Middle East Eye has learned.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mohsen Mustafa and his 23-year-old cousin Ahmed Sherif Ahmed Abdel Wahab have not been heard from since Mustafa posted on Facebook claiming responsibility for the raid, shortly before his profile was removed.
The men were reportedly involved in the storming of the police station on 25 July, where a group who identified themselves as “Iron 17” raided the facility and detained several security personnel for hours.
Footage of the raid showing the young men holding the officers captive went viral. The videos, which were published on a Telegram channel and viewed millions of times, showed the men condemning the closure of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza and the arrests of activists collecting aid for Palestinians in the territory.
In one clip, a detained officer said that the opening of the crossing was “impossible”.
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Egypt’s interior ministry promptly issued two statements claiming the footage was fabricated as part of a Muslim Brotherhood-led plot, and that those involved in circulating it had been arrested. The ministry accused the Muslim Brotherhood of attempting to undermine Egypt’s support for Palestine. The Telegram channel disappeared shortly after.
The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) said the videos had been verified by former detainees who were held at the facility, while Egyptian news outlet Mada Masr cited lawyers who said documents visible in the footage belong to detainees who are currently under surveillance.
Hours before the channel disappeared, the group released an audio statement, attributed to Mustafa and Wahab, claiming responsibility for the operation.
In the statement, they rejected any political affiliations and described themselves as “heirs of Omar ibn al-Khattab and Amr ibn al-As”, in reference to early Islamic military and political leaders.
A friend of the men’s families told Middle East Eye that the pair were last heard from on the morning of the raid, when they said Mustafa was due to report to the station as part of his probation - Wahab accompanied him.
The family then saw a post by Mustafa on his Facebook page, claiming that he had seized the police station. Shortly after, his Facebook profile was taken down, and he and Wahab disappeared.
‘Full of Anger’
Mustafa and Wahab’s involvement in the raid came as a shock to the family - particularly Wahab who had no history of political activity and had never even entered a police station, according to the family friend.
Mustafa, however, was previously detained and forcibly disappeared for months in 2020, during which time he was subjected to torture.
According to the family friend, he was detained while security forces raided his home searching for one of his relatives. As he was the only male at home, they detained him to force his relative to hand himself in. The authorities denied his detention, and banned him from travel following his release.
In the five years since his release, he was required to report to the police station on a monthly basis.
The family friend said Mustafa was “full of anger” over his treatment by the authorities - his detention had interrupted his last year of university, forcing him to repeat the academic year.
Since the storming of the police station, all male members of the family have been arrested, and the whole family is now under informal house arrest and subject to 24/7 surveillance.
With no news of Mustafa and Wahab’s whereabouts, and the total refusal by the authorities to acknowledge that the raid ever happened, the families are fearing for the young men's lives.
“There is no chance of accountability for something that never happened,” the family friend told MEE.
Meanwhile, Mada Masr reported a surge in arrests in the aftermath of the raid, with security forces setting up a security cordon around the area.
Rights lawyer Nabih al-Genady reported an uptick in arrests in Helwan even before the footage was circulated. He noted that the arrests did not appear to be targeting a specific group, and that some of them were in connection with content posted on personal Facebook pages.
The storming of the police headquarters comes amid mounting public anger against the Egyptian authorities for failing to do more to open the Rafah crossing and ensure the entry of aid into the besieged Gaza strip, where dozens are dying of Israeli-imposed starvation.
The action follows a wave of protests the previous week outside Egyptian embassies in European capitals, sparked by activist Anas Habib in the Netherlands, who symbolically locked embassy gates to protest the Rafah closure.
The men’s disappearances also come after rights groups reported that two detainees had died in Egyptian police custody within 24 hours.
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