The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemns the referral of its client, lawyer Ibrahim Metwally, 61, coordinator of ‘the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared’, to trial in two of the three cases brought against him by Supreme State Security Prosecution.

The three cases brought similar charges for which he was interrogated  and spent more than seven years of arbitrary pretrial detention.

Ibrahim Metwally, along with 52 others, was referred to trial by Khaled Diaa, the first attorney general of the State Security Prosecution, in connection with Case 900 of 2017 Supreme State Security Prosecution, and with 17 others in connection with Case 1470 of 2019 Supreme State Security Prosecution.

Ibrahim Metwally's prosecution and detention came after he called for an end to enforced disappearances in Egypt, following his individual efforts to uncover the fate of his son, Amr Ibrahim Metwally, who disappeared on July 8th 2013, during the ‘Egyptian Presidential Guard’ incidents. Amr was 22 years old at the time.

Following his disappearance, his father filed a number of complaints to the Public Prosecutor and the National Council for Human Rights, but his complaints went unanswered. In early 2014, Metwally and a number of other families of the forcibly disappeared began submitting mass complaints to the authorities to clarify the fate of their loved ones. However, at the time of writing this statement, not a single investigation has been opened into the ongoing enforced disappearance of Amr Metwally and similar cases.

Metwally was arrested on September 10th 2017 at Cairo Airport when he was travelling to Geneva on an invitation to participate in the 113th session of the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances. He was prevented from travelling and appeared two days later, on  September 12th before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, which interrogated him only once in relation to Case 900 of 2017, accusing him of ‘leading a terrorist group’ and financing it between 2013 and 2024.

His pretrial detention in Case 900 of 2017 was renewed for two years and one month, during which time he was held in solitary confinement and denied his right to  receive family visits, until the State Security Prosecution decided to release him onOctober 15th 2019, without pending guaranties but the Ministry of Interior did not implement the decision, and Metwally remained under enforced disappearance for 20 days, during which he was subjected to physical torture until he reappeared before the State Security Prosecution on November 5th 2019, when he was interrogated in connection with Case 1470 of 2019 and held in detention for nine months before the Criminal Court decided to replace his detention with another precautionary measure.

When the State Security Prosecution decided to refer this case a few weeks ago, five years after it was opened, it accused him of joining and financing a ‘terrorist group’ and participating in a criminal agreement to commit a terrorist crime that did not take place between 1992 and 2020.

 Metwally was kept in detention even aftera second judicial decision to release him was issued, as he was surprised while completing his exit procedures in August 2020 that he was accused in a third case No. 786 of 2020, this time Metwally refused to answer the investigators' questions in protest against his rotation on the third case with the same charges without being confronted with a single piece of evidence. 

The terrorism chambers sitting in the Badr Correction and Rehabilitation Centre continued to renew Metwally's detention pending Case 786 of 2020 in violation of the Code of Criminal Procedures. Now, for more than four years after rotating him into the third case, Metwally is still being held in pretrial detention, despite the expiration of the two-year maximum period of pretrial detention set by law.

For the past seven years, Metwally has not been able to see any of his family members without separation barriers. Moreover, Metwally experienced poor detention conditions. He was detained for five years in Tora Maximum Security Prison 2, where he developed an enlarged and severely inflamed prostate, was denied exercise and was denied access to his medication, books and newspapers. In 2022, he was transferred to Badr 3 Prison, whose administration allowed Metwally's family to visit him for the first time in June 2023, and met with them by phone in a glass booth.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights affirms that the referral of lawyer Ibrahim Metwally, coordinator of the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared, after seven years of arbitrary pretrial detention, is a referral with no real legal justification and no serious investigations. What he has been subjected to since his detention seven years ago can only be explained as punishment for exercising his legitimate right as a father and lawyer, all he sought to clarify the fate of his son whose case the Egyptian authorities refused to pay attention to and investigate, just as they continue to refuse to sign the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).