The Doctors' Syndicate said on Friday that it had filed an official complaint with the General Prosecution against the Interior Ministry over the arrest of one of its members, which it considers an act of “forced disappearance”.
The syndicate said Taher Mokhtar was arrested on Thursday and may have been taken in for interrogation at the National Security Agency’s office in Downtown Cairo.
Syndicate board member Ahmed Hussein was tasked to attend interrogations with Mokhtar along with a lawyer. The syndicate, however, said its lawyer failed to accurately locate where the doctor was detained at the agency.
Mokhtar is a member of the syndicate’s freedoms committee and had been in charge of following up on the conditions of detainees and prisoners held by the Interior Ministry.
Rights advocates have decried a surge in the number of mysterious disappearances of activists by security agents, with most of those arrested taken to unknown locations before reappearing before courts. The Interior Ministry has denied practicing systematic disappearances, arguing that most of those arrested were to go on trial.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
