Egyptian security forces arrested prominent political activist Ahmed Douma from his home in the Mokattam district shortly after midnight, in a covert operation marked by the confiscation of electronic devices and the erasure of surveillance records, according to his family.
Mohamed Douma, the activist’s brother, told Al Manassa the arrest took place around midnight, adding that when he reached Ahmed’s apartment soon after, it had been stripped of all his technical equipment. “The mobile phones, the laptop, the camera…everything was taken. Nothing was left in the apartment,” he said.
The security force also confiscated the hard drive containing the building’s surveillance camera footage, Mohamed Douma said. “They took the cameras’ hard drive from the building where he lives,” he added.
According to the family, the arrest was carried out in total secrecy, with no eyewitnesses. “No one saw how he was taken. Not even the building’s doorman,” Mohamed Douma said.
Mohamed stressed that his brother had received no prior summons, arrest warrant, or official request to appear before being detained. “No letters came to the house, no summons, nothing at all,” he said, leaving the family in the dark about the reasons for the arrest.
Asked whether the arrest could be linked to Ahmed Douma’s recent posts about the detention and alleged abuse of his imprisoned friend Mohamed Adel, the former spokesperson for the April 6 Youth Movement, Mohamed Douma said the family has no information. “We have nothing we can predict at this moment,” he said.
He warned that under current conditions in Egypt, social media activity alone can be turned into a legal pretext for arrest.
The family said they are awaiting Ahmed Douma’s appearance before the prosecution to begin investigations and to learn the charges formally leveled against him.
Last Wednesday, Rofaida Hamdy, wife of imprisoned activist Mohamed Adel, called for an urgent medical examination of her husband to document what she described as “signs of beating on his foot and strangulation on his neck.”
Two days later, Ahmed Douma wrote on Facebook, drawing a comparison between Israel’s imprisonment of Palestinians and Egypt’s treatment of detainees. “It is tragic that while the world is trying to focus on Palestinian prisoners in the jails of the Israeli enemy, our jailers here insist on proving they are fierce competitors…and may even surpass the enemy during genocide…boasting of Badr 3 and 10th of Ramadan 4, beating Mohamed Adel and threatening him,” he wrote.
The following day, the Interior Ministry denied that Adel had been assaulted inside 10th of Ramadan Prison 4, claiming he had not been attacked by other inmates.
Last month, Cairo airport authorities barred Ahmed Douma from traveling without explanation, telling him to refer to the public prosecutor.
On Aug. 19, 2023, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree pardoning several people serving final sentences, including Ahmed Douma, who had been sentenced in 2013 to 15 years in prison in the Cabinet clashes case.
Over the past year, the Supreme State Security Prosecution summoned Douma five times, most recently on Sept. 29, accusing him of “spreading false news” in a Facebook post about the alleged assault of former supply minister Bassem Ouda inside Badr Prison by an officer from Egypt’s National Security Sector. He was released at the time on 50,000 Egyptian pounds bail.
In April, eight Egyptian human rights organizations warned in a joint statement of what they described as a recurring pattern by the Supreme State Security Prosecution of re-targeting political opponents, either by interrogating them or re-imprisoning them after their release.
