UN can take issue of enforced disappearances in Egypt to ICC, warns former vice president

A Nobel laureate and former vice president has warned that the UN Security Council is able to take the issue of enforced disappearances in Egypt to the International Criminal Court, Almesryoon.com reported on Friday.

“In international law,” tweeted Mohamed ElBaradei, “the UN Security Council can turn to the ICC the crimes of enforced disappearance even if the country [where the crime is committed] is not a party in that court.”

New reports show that dozens of complaints have been lodged with the authorities about enforced disappearances in Egypt. Such crimes have been committed by the Egyptian security forces since the military coup on 3 July, 2013.

Read: In Egypt, 340 forced disappearance cases in two months

The London-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights issued a statement recently noting that around 120 cases of enforced disappearance had been recorded more than a year ago. The rights group said that this includes children and women.

Another human rights group issued a report early this week in which it is said that 600 such crimes took place during the first three months of 2015.

Both groups said that the numbers in their reports were only citing part of the problem; cases which they could find out about or whose relatives or lawyers had made contact. They stressed that there are many other unreachable cases in Egypt.