This archive report was first published on 29 September 2019.
September 29, 2019
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent Egyptian dissident, was detained on Sunday morning beyond his overnight probation, his family and a judicial official confirmed.
Abdel Fattah, 37, was serving a five-year probation sentence after completing a five-year jail term in March for staging a protest against a 2013 law that effectively banned public gatherings.
His probation required him to report to a police station near his home in Cairo at 6:00pm every evening and stay overnight in a cell until 6:00am.
However, on Sunday morning, he was not released, and his whereabouts remain unknown.
Officers denied his mother, Laila Soueif, access to the police station and refused to say why he was not released.
Abdel Fattah had previously told AFP in June that security personnel had ordered him to stop talking about his probation publicly or face being sent back to jail indefinitely.
As a prolific tweeter, he had commented on small-scale protests in Egypt in the last two weeks, which followed an online call to dissent by an exiled Egyptian businessman.
Some 2,000 people have been arrested in the past week in what may be the largest expansion of an ongoing crackdown in Egypt since 2013, rights groups say.
Authorities have detained other prominent critics, including well-known academics, politicians, and lawyers.
Abdel Fattah has advocated on behalf of other detainees, calling for a more humane and flexible system of probation.
