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CAIRO - Egyptian authorities should immediately disclose the fate and
whereabouts of Mohamed Saad Tork, who disappeared in July 2009 with
strong indications that he was being held by the authorities, and
prosecute those responsible, Human Rights Watch said today. Tork's case
highlights the continuing practice of enforced disappearances by Egypt's
State Security Investigations agency.
"The brutal practice of 'disappearing' people is a terrible blight on
Egypt's human rights record," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East
director at Human Rights Watch. "Authorities should immediately reveal
Mohamed Tork's whereabouts and prosecute those responsible for his
disappearance."
On July 26, 2009, Tork, a 23-year-old second-year dentistry student
at Alexandria University, told his family he was going for a walk. When
they had heard nothing more from him for 48 hours, his family filed a
missing person report at the Rashid police station, in the Beheira
governorate. Five days later, Mohamed's father, Saad Tork, received a
summons from the head of the police station's criminal investigations
division.
"I went to the police station and the officer in charge asked me if
Mohamed was ok or had health problems," Saad Tork told Human Rights
Watch. "I explained that he'd had depression and was taking medication.
The officer went on to ask me exactly what medication he was taking,
what the dose was and who his doctor was. He then relayed all this
information over the phone to another person.
"A week after that I went to the Damanhour State Security offices,
and the guards told me that Mohamed had been moved to Rashid. When I
went to the Rashid office, they told me they didn't know anything about
him and that I was not to come back."
The family sent complaints to the Interior Ministry, public
prosecutor and other government offices. After a year without any
response, in July 2010, the family decided to take the case to human
rights organizations and to publicize it to the media.
The Association for Human Rights Legal Aid and the Arab Network for
Human Rights Information filed a disappearance complaint before the
Office of the Public Prosecutor on August 8, 2010. Gamal Eid, the
lawyer who filed the complaint, told Human Rights Watch that the
prosecution said it was still investigating the complaint and had made
inquiries to the State Security Investigations agency (SSI), the
internal security branch of the Interior Ministry.
Tork's family said they are not aware of any reason why SSI would
want to detain him. The agency had summoned him to its Rashid office in
April 2009, and questioned him about his university activities, in
particular his participation in a demonstration at the university at the
time of the Gaza war a few months earlier. They released him after an
hour, the family said.
The long silence about Tork's whereabouts raises serious concerns
about his well-being, Human Rights Watch said. State Security detention
is frequently incommunicado, but usually lasts for about two months.
"The extreme anguish inflicted on relatives of the disappeared who
have to deal with the pain of not knowing the fate of their loved one
makes the family direct victims of the violation as well," Stork said.
"Mohamed Tork's family have a right to know where he is and in what
condition."
State Security incommunicado detention, which can amount to enforced
disappearance, is common for political detainees. The agency routinely
detains suspects in high-profile cases before bringing them to the state
security prosecutor to face official charges.
In 2009, the agency held incommunicado for up to two months 25 men
accused of membership in a terrorist organization in connection with a
robbery in Cairo's Zeitoun district and alleged plans to attack Suez
Canal shipping. In February 2009, the SSI detained a blogger, Diaa Eddin
Gad, for 50 days before releasing him without charge. Gad was among a
number of bloggers and activists arrested in relation to protests over
the Gaza war, in December 2008 and January 2009. More recently, on March
25, the SSI detained Tarek Khedr, a member of the April 6 youth
activist group, for 80 days.
Incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance are illegal under
Egyptian law, which stipulates that police must bring detainees before a
prosecutor within 24 hours. The only legal places of detention under
Egyptian law are police stations and prisons, both of which are subject
to visits by the prosecution. Detention in State Security offices and
without a prosecutor's detention order is illegal under both Egyptian
and international law.
As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, Egypt has an obligation to provide an accessible, effective,
and enforceable remedy - including justice, truth, and adequate
reparations - after a disappearance violation has occurred. Under
international law, victims and their families have a right to know the
truth about violations they suffered. On March 12, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that under
international law, "The right to the truth implies knowing the full and
complete truth about events that transpired ... In cases of enforced
disappearance and missing persons, the right also implies the right to
know the fate and whereabouts of the victim."
In December 2006, the UN opened for signature the International
Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced
Disappearance. The convention defines the grave and serious violation of
human rights of an enforced disappearance as "the arrest, detention,
abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the
State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization,
support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to
acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or
whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside
the protection of the law."
So far, 83 states have signed the convention and in August, Paraguay
became the 19th state to ratify it. One more ratification is needed for
the convention to come into force. Egypt has not signed the convention.
"This week millions of families around the world marked International
Day of the Disappeared," Stork said. "The Egyptian government should
sign and ratify the convention to signal that it will end this
practice."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
"Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens," said U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. "Instead, we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
As U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the White House red carpet for fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Palestine defenders demanded justice after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of children in the illegally occupied West Bank, killing one Palestinian-American boy and wounding two others.
Fourteen-year-old Omar Mohammad Rabea and two other Palestinian-American boys, ages 14 and 15, were shot by Israeli occupation forces in Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah.
"Two of them were transported by ambulance to a nearby medical center and then to the hospital," said Turmus Ayya Mayor Adeeb Lafi. "The army arrived at the scene and detained the third injured boy, who is 14 years old and holds U.S. citizenship."
Rabea's father said his son was shot six times—twice each in the face, chest, and shoulder.
The Palestinian National Authority's Foreign Ministry condemned Israeli forces' "use of live fire against three children," adding that "Israel's continued impunity as an illegal occupying power encourages it to commit further crimes."
The Israel Defense Forces claimed on social media that troops "identified three terrorists who were throwing rocks at a highway with civilian vehicles" and subsequently "fired at the terrorists who posed a danger to civilians, killing one of them and wounding the other two."
In the United States, the slain teen's relatives in New Jersey expressed anger over the killing. Rabea's father toldAgence France-Presse that the U.S. government habitually ignores or downplays Israeli crimes against Palestinians, including "assaults, killings, arson, and theft of Palestinian land."
"All of these things—the U.S. Embassy turns a blind eye to them," he said.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said on the social media site X: "Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens. Instead we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) also took to X, noting reporting that Rabea "was denied medical aid and left to die."
"This atrocity must be condemned and investigated," the congressman added. "We cannot turn a blind eye."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding said on the social media site Bluesky that "Israel must be held accountable for its killings of American citizens—from aid workers, journalists, and humanitarian observers to children and the elderly."
However, "instead of pursuing justice for its citizens, the U.S. government is backing Israel's impunity by arming its violence," IMEU continued.
"The U.S. government's refusal to demand accountability for Israel's endless killings of Palestinians‚ even when it kills U.S. citizens—has deadly consequences," the group added. "That impunity emboldens Israeli soldiers and settlers to keep brutally attacking Palestinian children and families. Enough."
Other American citizens killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank include International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie, age 23 (2003); Orwah Hamad, age 14 (2014); Mahmoud Shaalan, age 16 (2016); journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, age 51 (2022); Omar Assad, age 78 (2022); Tawfiq Hafez Tawfiq Ajaq, age 17 (2024); Mohammad Ahmed Mohammad Khdour, age 17 (2024); and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old ISM activist (2024).
Successive U.S. administrations have provided Israel with more than $300 billion in aid since the modern Jewish state's founding, largely through terrorism and ethnic cleansing, in 1948—far more than any other nation has received.
On Monday, Trump welcomed Netanyahu at the White House. The prime minister's flight from Hungary, where he met with far-right President Viktor Orbán, reportedly went out of its way to avoid the airspace of European nations that might enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Israeli leader for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.
Israel's 539-day genocidal assault continued Monday in Gaza, where more than 180,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including thousands of missing people who are presumed dead and buried beneath rubble—since October 2023, when Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel.
In the West Bank—which Israel has illegally occupied and colonized since 1967 and where more than 700,000 Jewish colonists have settled—United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk last week lamented Palestinians' "catastrophic suffering," calling the situation there "extremely alarming."
Türk noted that his office has verified that Israeli soldiers and settlers—sometimes working together—have killed at least 909 Palestinians across the West Bank including East Jerusalem since October 2023, including 191 children and five people with disabilities. Attacks by Palestinian militants have killed 51 Israelis including 15 women and 4 children over that same period.
Thousands of West Bank Palestinians have been
killed or wounded by IDF troops and Israeli settlers since October 2023. Last week, Roland Friedrich, who heads the West Bank division of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said that the scale of forced displacement is unprecedented during the 58 years of Israeli occupation.
One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, "we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
An Israeli human rights group on Monday published a report in which Israel Defense Forces officers and soldiers who took part in the creation of a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Israel described alleged war crimes including indiscriminate killing, as well as the wholesale deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in what multiple whistleblowers called a "kill zone."
The new report from Breaking the Silence (BTS) details how Israel—which for decades has dubiously relied upon defensive buffer zones in territories it conquers or controls—decided on a policy of "widespread, deliberate destruction" in order to create a security perimeter ranging between roughly half a mile and a mile in width on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Palestinian border.
"To create this area, Israel launched a major miltary engineering operation that, by means of wholesale destruction, entirely reshaped about 16% of the Gaza Strip... an area previously home to some 35% of Gaza's agricultural land," the report states. "The perimeter extends from the coast in the north to the Egyptian border in the south, all within the territory of the Gaza Strip and outside of Israel's internationally recognized borders."
"The mission given to soldiers in the field, as revealed in their testimonies, was to create an empty, completely flat expanse about a kilometer wide along the Gaza side of the border fence," the publication continues. "This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished."
"Palestinians were denied entry into the area altogether, a ban which was enforced using live fire, including machine gun fire and tank shells. In this way, the military created a death zone of enormous proportions," the report adds. "Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety."
"The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions," the paper says. "Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting."
"Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland."
Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were also targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. The officers and soldiers interviewed by BTS struggled to explain whether noncombatants were informed of the no-go zone's limits, with one saying civilians knew to stay away when they saw that "enough people died or got injured" crossing the unmarked boundary.
Some people who entered the perimeter out of sheer desperation were targeted. Israel's blockade of Gaza has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation, and Palestinians entered the "kill zone" to pick hubeiza, a nutritious wild plant, after the area's farmland was razed.
"The IDF really is fulfilling the public's wishes, which state: 'There are no innocents in Gaza. We'll show them,'" one reserve warrant officer explained. "People were incriminated for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but... boom," tank shells were fired at him from half a mile away.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, that same officer said that at first, his attitude toward invading Gaza was, "I went there because they killed us and now we're going to kill them."
"And I found out that we're not only killing them—we're killing them, we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs," they added. "We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Another IDF reservist officer told BTS that he was briefed that "there is no civilian population" in the area, where Palestinians are "terrorists, all of them." Asked what the area looked like after the IDF clearing operation, the officer replied: "Hiroshima."
A captain in an armored division of the IDF reserves said "the borderline is a kill zone" where "there are no clear rules of engagement" or "proper combat procedure."
"Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death," the captain added.
The BTS report follows an investigation published last December by Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, in which IDF soldiers and veterans described a "kill zone" in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot "anyone who enters."
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" one commander said. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
The new report comes as Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly expelled from areas of Gaza including the south and an expanded border perimeter. The Associated Pressreported Monday that Israel "now controls more than 50% of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land."
Israeli troops are moving to seize large tracts of the Gaza Strip for a so-called "security zone" and Jewish recolonization. Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government have said the campaign is being coordinated with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza, remove all of its Palestinians, and transform the Mediterranean enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
On Monday, Netanyahu arrived in Washington, D.C. from Hungary for talks with Trump and other U.S. officials regarding topics including a Gaza cease-fire, release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, Iran policy, and tariffs. Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for him and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its conduct in a war that has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza and almost all of the strip's more than 2 million people forcibly displaced—often multiple times.
Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza continued on Monday. An early morning IDF strike on a tent where numerous journalists were sleeping outside Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis killed Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi and another man, who were burned alive as helpless witnesses were unable to douse the flames or rescue victims.
Nine others were reportedly wounded in the attack, which the IDF said targeted a Hamas member posing as a journalist. More than 230 journalists have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 2023.
"Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request," one legal expert noted. "It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Just hours before a midnight deadline, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order directing the Trump administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador, to the United States.
Roberts—who is part of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority but has publicly criticized President Donald Trump's attacks on the federal judiciary and sometimes sided with the liberal justices against the administration—did not explain his decision to grant an administrative stay, which temporarily pauses Xinis' order until the high court makes another decision.
"I would not reach too much into Roberts' action," saidSlate's Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the court. "Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request. Remember that Roberts also stayed Judge [Amir Ali's] order on foreign aid before the full court ultimately denied a stay. It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Roberts ordered Abrego Garcia's attorneys to respond by 5:00 pm ET Tuesday. "BUT: Abrego Garcia's lawyers have—at roughly the same time, although Roberts' order appears first on the docket—already filed their response," notedLaw Dork's Chris Geidner.
"In short, the question is now back to the court," Geidner explained. "No reply is required in shadow docket requests, although it is often submitted. The court does not need to wait for a reply, so any reply should be submitted as quickly as a party thinks the court would need it/might act."
As Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote to the high court:
The government knew about the court order prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador, and admits that removing him in violation of that order was an "administrative error"... Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country. He is not wanted by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.
The government "can—and does—return wrongfully removed migrants as a matter of course"... The district court's order instructing the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return is routine... It does not implicate foreign policy or even domestic immigration policy in any case. The United States has never claimed that it is powerless to correct its error and before today, it did not contend that doing so would cause it any harm. That is because the only one harmed by the current state of affairs is Abrego Garcia.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to intervene earlier Monday, after Maryland-based Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday and a panel from the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined to grant a stay.
One of the appellate judges wrote: "The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The government's contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."
Before the Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in his native El Salvador, he lived in Maryland with his wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen; their autistic, nonverbal 5-year-old child; and two children from Vasquez Sura's previous relationship.
As CNNreported Monday, before Roberts' decision, Vasquez Sura had welcomed the appeals decision and renewed her call for Trump and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, to bring her husband home.
“This decision gives me hope, and even more encouragement to keep fighting. My children, family, and I will continue praying and seeking justice. Now that the court has spoken, I ask again that both President Trump and President Bukele stop attempting any further delays," she said. "They need to follow the court's order NOW. My children are waiting to be reunited with their father tonight."
Congressional Democrats—including Reps. Joaquin Castro (Texas) and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) on Monday—have also pressured the administration to return Abrego Garcia to his family. Castro also shared a warning from Joyce White Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, that "if it can happen to Abrego Garcia, it can happen to any of us."
As Common Dreamsreported, Trump on Sunday expressed a desire to accept Bukele's offer to take prisoners who are U.S. citizens. "I love that," he said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."