The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners Campaign

Hand in Hand ... Egypt without Torture

  Cairo: 11 / 5 /2004
 

 On 11/5/204, the Administrative Judiciary Court postpones considering the case filed by HRAAP against the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior and the Libyan Embassy in Cairo to determine the status of 21 Egyptian citizens missed in Libya after they had been deceived by allegations of receiving contracts to work in Italy through the Libyan territories to session of 15/6/2004. That is according to the request of the two sides to read in detail and comment on the documents and defense memos submitted from the claimers till informing the Libyan ambassador in Cairo. 

It is worth mentioning that the lawyers of the association have handed over moves certificate of the disappeared citizens tell entering the Libyan territories on October 2001 and asserts that they have not return to Egypt since then and what asserts the allegation of the association.

HRAAP issued a lawsuit to the State Council on 25/1/2004 against the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Libyan Embassy in Cairo to determine the status of 21 Egyptian citizens lost in Libya after they had been deceived by allegations of receiving contracts to work in Italy through the Libyan territories. That lawsuit was registered as No. 9718/58 judicial, and the date of the first session set on 16/3/2004 on which the court decided to postpone the session to 30/3/2004 and binding the ministry of Interiors to submit moves certificate of the disappeared citizens as well as their visas with them handed over to the Libyan authorities by one of the Egyptian residents in Libya and then to the Egyptian authorities to let the court read it in detail and re-informing the Libyan authorities officially.

The incidents date back to the period between 16/10/2001-23/10/2001, when 24 Egyptian citizens, all of them from Zenara village-Tala- Minofeya, had gone to Libya lawfully through Al-Salloum on the Egyptian-Libyan border. This happened after one of the Egyptian residents in Libya had deluded them in claiming that he could send them to Italy through Libya in order to get jobs there. Consequently, each one of them has paid 15000 pounds to get them visas to Italy as well as the fees of traveling by sea. Then, the same person took the passports alleging that he would sign them from the Embassy of Italy and would return them to them when they were going to travel by sea, and he also prepared accommodations for them in Libya.    

 According to what they had agreed on, a ship was ready to take the victims (the missing) to Italy. Since then, there has been no any contact between them and their families in Cairo.

 The disappeared victims’ families appealed to many official and non-official authorities attempting to discover the location of their disappeared relatives. These officials were the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, the Libyan Embassy in Cairo, the Egyptian Embassy in Libya and the heads and managers of the Egyptian Journals. However, all of these contacts resulted in nothing. This urged some of these families to travel to Libya more than once. There they met with the Attorney General of Libya, who sent them to the chief of the Criminal Investigations who promised that he would search for them within one week; afterwards he refused to meet with them again. Later on, the victims’ families heard from their relatives in Libya that the Libyan coastal forces had arrested them and returned them to Libya where they were detained in political prisons in the Green Court because the ship they boarded belonged to the Libyan Navy and no one can approach them or even ask about them in that prison. In addition, it was rumored that were hanged unlawfully.    

                     On 10/12/2002, HRAAP appealed to:

1-       The Presidency of the Republic

2-       The Minster of the foreign Affairs, Ahmed Maher

3-       His excellency, Mohamed Mohamed Mubarak (Ambassador of Libya in Egypt)

4-       His excellency, Amr Mousa (Secretary General of the Arab League)

5-       Mr. Farouk Eissa (Secretary General of the Arab Lawyers Union)

6-       Dr. Sameh Ashour (Head of the Arab Lawyers Union)

             On 6/1/2003, HRAAP received a letter from the Libyan embassy indicating that:

             The representative of the Libyan affairs in Egypt told the authorities in Libya about the missing Egyptians, and the authorities replied to him that they were not registered and nothing was known about them.

             On 20/10/2003, HRAAP received another letter, contradicting the first one as follows:

            The concerned authorities in Libya asserted that the Egyptians were not imprisoned in any of the Libyan prisons. Moreover, 23 passports, belong to the missing Egyptians, were found except for one passport that is not included in the list of the missing, belonging to Wageeh Al-Sayed Al-Shenawy. One of the Egyptians residents in Libya, Said Al Maghawry, handed the 23 passports belonging to the missing to the Egyptian embassy in Trabuls.

             In the course of events, the victims’ families became sure that their missing relatives were deceived by Yasser Abd Rahman Ismail and his father Abd Rahman Ismail Alsobhey, after arresting them and sending them for a trial in Egypt, issue no. 14168/13684/2002 (Al Nozha felonies), session 29/1/2003. The criminals were sentenced to three years as well as paying for the expenses of the lawyer.         

            This is because they deceived many Egyptian citizens claiming that they could send them to Italy through Libya, in addition they endangered their lives.

            In spite of all these events and the long terms of the victim’s absence, the families of the victims had nothing to do but to resort to the legal authorities to make the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interiors in Cairo determine their destiny. 

Edited by Greg Saunders

 The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners