May 5. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced this Friday the arrest of relatives and friends of former parliamentarian and opposition member Ahmed Tantawi, a possible candidate for the 2024 elections in Egypt for the Karama Party.
“The arrests of relatives and supporters of Ahmed Tantawi show that the government of President Abdelfatá al Sisi is determined to stifle dissent and classify all those who are critical (of the regime) as a threat,” said the senior Middle East researcher. and HRW North Africa, Amr Magdi.
Several lawyers have reported to HRW that two of his uncles were detained in Kafr al Seij, a city north of Cairo, while security forces also arrested ten other people close to Tantawi. All of them face charges of “membership of a terrorist group”, “undermining public security” or “possession of explosives and weapons”, among others.
This wave of arrests of the close circle of Tantawi, who announced in a video posted on his social networks that he planned to return to Egypt this Saturday to stand in the 2024 elections, is the third in “recent months.”
Thus, HRW has affirmed that there is a “clear pattern” on the part of the Egyptian government against “activists and critics living abroad” that uses “illegal searches, arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention of relatives” as a form of reprisal.
“When the closest and dearest people in my social circle are harmed, this is definitely a kind of indirect pressure. It is definitely painful,” Tantawy himself said in an interview with the BBC in September.
