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Over the past two months, the Refugee Platform in Egypt received testimonies and grievances from families of those arrested in connection with unlawful migration cases, stating that many detainees are being ‘rotated’ (i.e. re-arrested on new charges) after their release or acquittal.
On February 16th, the Attorney General issued a decision ordering the technical office of the Public Prosecution to ‘examine these cases nationwide, consider the positions of the defendants in them, and take the necessary fair decisions regarding them.’ This decision came after hundreds of grievances from the families of the defendants and after ‘the Public Prosecution reviewed social media sites for reports circulating from citizens about the repeated imprisonment of defendants in immigration cases.’ The decision was made following hundreds of complaints from the families of the defendants.
According to these testimonies, reports, and case records that we verified, some of which we published in February, hundreds of defendants in these cases from different governorates were subjected to multiple violations, including torture, enforced disappearance for varying periods of time, filing reports without evidence, and recycling defendants in new cases on the same charges after release decisions by the public prosecution.
Citizens, parliamentarians and community leaders appeal for amnesty for detainees:
Citizens continue to publish appeals for pardons for their detained relatives, explaining that their relatives were imprisoned even though they were not involved in any acts of migrant smuggling. Moreover, the appeals state that there was no evidence in the filed reports; and that, after the public prosecution’s decision to release their detained relatives was exercised, the security services refused to implement these decisions so that they could arbitrarily detain the released detainees and then re-accuse them in new cases in the same area or other areas of the republic.
In January, the families of the detainees created a Facebook group called ‘An Appeal to the President of the Republic, the Attorney General, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Interior’ which garnered more than 3,000 members who post daily news of their detained relatives and the violations to which they are subjected to while stating their demands under the hashtag “#Release_Oppressed_Immigration_Cases.”
Since the public prosecutor’s decision in February, we have received testimonies that some detainees were released and returned home, indicating a slight improvement in the decisions taken on these cases, however the suffering of detainees and their families continues in several governorates. “8 months we have lived through this injustice and oppression, and no one listens to us” one of the members posted on April 6th, 2022, on the aforementioned Facebook group. “A father of three children was released on bail, and the last time he was released was a month ago in Sohag, and today he was transferred to Gharbia with a new report” one of the members posted on April 6th, 2022.
In Matrouh governorate, Saeed al-Hafyan, former head of the Matrouh local council, posted a video in which he stated “An Egyptian woman told me that her husband was unjustly taken in a case – unlawful migration – and that I should write to the state to take responsibility for the children of falsely imprisoned men, so long as they imprison her and other women’s husbands, to support them since these women should not have to walk the street to support their families alone. This is dangerous talk.”
He added “We need a specific definition of illegal immigration, whether it is crossing to Libya or crossing the sea and entering Europe. We don’t want Europe to hire us as police officers, and we should not oppress our children” he concluded. “They say that Europe is paying us money for this state of affairs, but I don’t think any official in Egypt would accept that and that this is a rumor, so don’t believe it.”
In May 2017, the EU approved a cooperation program with Egypt to strengthen migration governance worth €60 million under the North Africa window of the EU Trust Fund. These funds helped tighten restrictions on unlawful migration in Egypt. In 2016, Egypt enacted Law 82 of the so-called ‘Combating Illegal Migration and Migrant Smuggling’ and created a committee called the ‘National Coordinating Committee to Prevent and Combat Illegal Migration and Human Trafficking’ to lead the drafting and implementation of the law with funding from the EU and support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Law 82 of 2016 targets migrant smugglers and those working in smuggling networks, but more importantly, one of its articles stipulates that it does not criminalize unlawful migrants which led Europeans to praise the law at the time. Nonetheless, contrary to the law’s provisions, unlawful migrants who tried to enter were regularly arrested on the basis of their unlawful stay in Egypt or their unlawful attempt to exit the country.
“A law was passed [referring to the amendments to Law 82 of 2016 recently approved by parliament] and has passed out of parliament and still has to go to the Council of Ministers and then be ratified by the president, a law on unlawful migration” al-Hafyan stated. ”Currently, people in detention have no law being applied to them or to keep them detained, as the judiciary already issued acquittals, releases and bail, so there is no article by which detained people are held or tried” al-Hafyan concluded.
In a position paper on Law 82 of 2016 and its amendments approved by parliament on March 29th, 2022, the Refugee Platform in Egypt noted that the law prescribes severe punishment while ignoring the depth of the material unlawful migration phenomenon (socially, culturally and economically), and that there are no real protection measures for victims especially migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The position paper pointed out that there is a contradiction between Law 82 of 2016 and other laws, including a legislative deficit that caused the arrest of thousands of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers since the law was issued until now. This involved subjecting these people to unwarranted military trials and arbitrary detention without legal basis, and to inhumane conditions without any medical care, while preventing them from their right to seek asylum.
At the end of the position paper on Law 82 of 2016 and its amendments, the Refugee Platform in Egypt provided a set of proposals to parliament and some recommendations to the authorities concerned with migration files and issues. Among the recommendations were that the law be re-examined and amended to include articles that preserve and protect victims from criminal accountability or penalties of any kind, develop appropriate protection measures taking into account the context of seeking asylum, address legislative contradictions between Law 82 and other laws, and stop the arbitrary detention and forced deportation of asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees who enter or exit Egypt unlawfully.
“There is a difference between enforcing the law and abusing citizens, what is happening is abuse and not law” al-Hafyan stated. He then made an appeal to the President of the Republic, ”I appeal to you, Mr President, to stop arbitrarily detaining and forcibly deporting asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees who enter or leave Egypt in an unlawful manner.” He continued to appeal to the President of the Republic by stating “I appeal to you in the good name of God, Mr. President, and on these blessed days to issue a general amnesty for all detainees.”
In the House of Representatives, MP Mohamed Abdelalem Dawoud, who represents the Kafr el-Sheikh constituency, called for the release of hundreds of victims of unlawful migration who were detained despite their release by the Public Prosecution during his speech at the plenary session of the House of Representatives on March 8th.
In February and March, lawyer Mustafa al-Sadek published videos in which he says he appeared before the court on behalf of many defendants in unlawful migration cases after he received reports and grievances from the families of defendants from Upper Egypt, Matrouh, Sharqiya, Kafr al-Sheikh and other governorates. “The defendants are released, but unfortunately those who are released are detained and placed in custody somewhere else until another report is written for them. I have clients who are accused in 5, 6 and 7 reports, and the reports are numerous and repetitive in a manner of issuance that rotates these exonerated people through the carceral, the numbers are huge and many people are wronged in this matter” al-Sadek stated. “Most of the detainees are sick and have gone on hunger strikes, and no one has bothered to ask them why.”
Most of the cases in Upper Egypt were dismissed due to lack of evidence, but detainees in Sharqiya, Kafr al-Sheikh and Matrouh governorates continue to report misconduct, mistreatment, and re-imprisonment in new cases including testimonies that the detention center is small and confined yet holds 70 people. Furthermore, al-Sadek appealed to the President of the Republic and the Public Prosecutor to intervene to stop what he described as “the farce of rotating reports and rotating detainees.”
In Dakhalia governorate, 12 lawyers appeared on March 20th to defend the detainees in an unlawful migration case. Investigations into this case began by order of the public prosecutor after a boat carrying Egyptian migrants sank off the coast of Libya on August 23rd, 2021. At least 18 Egyptians drowned, 11 people from the village of Talbanah were killed, and 59 of the village’s youth died in this tragedy. One of the lawyers present stated in a live broadcast, after the hearing, that the main detainee in this case, Mohamed Abu Samra, is a fugitive, which is what the residents of Talbana village also stated in previous statements to Al-Masry Al-Youm. The lawyer added that “there are flaws in the investigations into this case, and the names of many detainees, who have nothing to do with the case’s evidence and proceedings, were included in the case reports, and the defense states as such in Salloum and Marsa Matrouh.”
The brother of one of the detainees in this case states “my brother is a construction worker, two police officers came to him and said come with us, we want to ask you a couple of questions at the state security office. These questions were ongoing for nine months, and today my brother still hasn’t returned. My brother has nothing to do with this case. I ask the whole world to stand with us because we are exhausted.”
