Egyptian security forces have carried out a widespread arrest operation earlier this month in which dozens of people linked to the opposition were detained, according to a rights group.
According to a report published by the Egyptian Network of Human Rights (ENHR), security forces dressed in civilian clothes went into several villages in the coastal governorate and raided dozens of homes.
The arrests took place at dawn on 17 September, with large numbers of police cars turning up in various villages in the Bahariya governorate.
Around 30 people were detained, according to the ENHR, which uses local sources and reports to track the government’s targeting of those accused of dissent.
“They were taken to an unknown destination before they were presented on Wednesday afternoon to the Kafr el-Dawwar prosecutor’s office,” the report read.
“They were investigated on charges of spreading false news and joining an outlawed group,” it added.
Those arrested will be detained for 15 days pending further investigations, the organisation said.
The ENHR has also documented dozens of arrests by Egyptian security forces in recent days, which it has described as “random” and as a way of using “pretrial detention as a means of punishment, not as a legal measure”.
Earlier this week, an Egyptian man was “forcibly disappeared” after posting a video on Facebook in which he criticised the economic situation under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi just months ahead of the presidential election, the rights group confirmed.
Hussein Muhammad Hussein went missing on 13 September, a day after he posted the video, in which he said he would not vote for Sisi again.
Egypt’s elections authority on Monday announced the timeline for the vote, which will take place on 10 December amid a crackdown on government critics and opposition leaders expected to run against Sisi.
Repression ahead of election
The presidential election will take place as Egypt is in the midst of a severe economic crisis that has seen the Egyptian pound lose half its value against the dollar, leading to record inflation and foreign currency shortages.
In August, annual inflation in Egypt reached close to 40 percent, according to official figures.
The election comes against the backdrop of continued targeting of the opposition, with an estimated 65,000 political prisoners languishing in jails since Sisi came to power in 2014, a year after leading a coup that toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.
Sisi won a second term in the 2018 election in a landslide victory, with 97 percent of the vote, against one candidate, himself a supporter of Sisi, after all serious opposition hopefuls had either been arrested or pulled out, citing intimidation.
Constitutional amendments in 2019 paved the way for the 68-year-old former army general to stand for an additional two terms, as well as extending the duration of presidential terms from four years to six.
