Egypt’s police arrest 3 female students

Egypt’s security forces have arrested three female students in the country’s coastal province of Alexandria, the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms announced yesterday.

“Security forces in Alexandria on Saturday arrested Suhaila Mahmoud Ahmed, a junior student the Alexandria University’s Faculty of Social Work, Khadija Bahaa Al-Din Mohamed, a sophomore student at the university’s Faculty of Arts, and Marwa Mohamed Abdel Hamid, in front of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,” the rights commission said on Twitter.

The three girls were reported to have been “forcibly disappeared” after their arrest.

The Egyptian government’s opponents, including Muslim Brotherhood leaders, have been facing forced arrests by the state police over accusations of “acts of violence.” In 2013, a military coup led by the country’s incumbent president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, toppled Egypt’s first freely-elected President Mohamed Morsi.

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Since 2013, Egyptian courts have sentenced hundreds to death, with most of the sentences appealed, while few were carried out.

While Cairo denies having political detainees in its prisons, human rights organisations have estimated the number of detainees to be tens of thousands. In September 2016, the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said that the number of political detainees in Egypt has exceeded 60,000 individuals.