When Hanan Badr el-Din’s husband disappeared, her life changed for good. She last saw him on television, wounded and at a hospital after attending a protest in July 2013. But when she went there, she couldn’t find him. She searched police stations, prisons, hospitals and morgues. No one could tell her what had happened to him. Her husband is one of hundreds of people missing at the hands of Egypt’s security forces. Every day, an estimated three to four people – mostly political activists, students, protesters, even school children as young as 14 – are taken by Egyptian police or military, never to be seen again. Yet the Egyptian government claims that disappearances don’t exist in the country. Hanan was not dissuaded. Her determination to find her husband has led her to others whose loved ones have gone missing. In 2014, she co-founded a group tasked with finding the truth behind these disappearances, and is now a leading voice in the search for Egypt’s disappeared. Her latest attempt to get information about her husband has seen her arrested and wrongly charged with belonging to a banned group, which could mean at least five years in prison.Tell Egypt to drop all charges and free Hanan immediately and unconditionally.
