At midnight on 24 September 2019 plainclothes police officers broke into Ahmed Al-Kholy's apartment in the Haram district of Cairo and took him to the National Security building in Abbasya, without showing a warrant for his arrest.
Across the streets of Egypt, a widespread crackdown was underway as calls to demand President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi stand down gained momentum. Roughly 2,000 politicians, journalists and activists were arrested and accused under state security cases as the first major demonstrations since the 2013 military coup shook the country's security apparatus.
For ten days Ahmed's family requested that the public prosecutor and the minister of justice reveal where he was being held but received no response. They now know that during that time Ahmed, an environmental expert, was being interrogated about his position as leader of the Independence Party.
"The main reason for his detention is his political activity in the Independence Party and the fact that he was one of the leaders," one of Ahmed's legal representatives, Mahmoud Adel, told MEMO, adding that during Ahmed's interrogations, which he attended, authorities focused on the party.
Almost three years on, the Czech-based Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR) are calling on the Egyptian government to release Ahmed from Tora's Mazraa Prison where he is still being held on pretrial detention, even though under Egyptian law prisoners can only be held on remand for two years.
Ahmed is accused of "leading a terrorist group called the independence party" and of signing a solidarity statement supporting the September demonstrations. His official arrest record has been doctored to state he was arrested on 3 October 2019 rather than 24 September 2019.
"The main problem, or legal violation, is the prolonged pretrial detention on fabricated charges," Mahmoud says. "Because Ahmed's been accused of leading a party which published a statement [urging demonstrators to take part in the protests] in 2019, but no one has seen the statement."
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