index  |  next>>

I. Summary

“If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.”
Former CIA official Robert Baer, in Stephen Grey, “America’s gulag,” The New Statesman, 17 May 2004.

Sometime at the end of February 2004, six Egyptians, alleged militants who had spent several years in exile in Yemen, the last several in official custody, were surreptitiously ferried from Sanaa to Cairo, very much against their will. Among them was Sayyid Imam `Abd al-`Aziz al-Sharif, formerly a leader of Egypt’s al-Jihad al-Islami, a group that had been responsible for numerous acts of political violence.  Save for a brief article in the state-run al-Gumhuriyya newspaper, the Egyptian government has yet to even acknowledge their detention in the country.

Like most if not all such transfers of wanted Islamists to Egypt, these renditions occurred with no due process protections, such as an extradition hearing before a judicial authority. Once in Egypt, most of the rendered individuals were held in prolonged incommunicado detentions and in several cases were “disappeared”—that is, the government refused to acknowledge their whereabouts or even the fact that they were in its custody. In the handful of cases in which information eventually does surface, it turns out that the suspects have been tortured or otherwise severely mistreated. For the rest, nothing is known, and it is reasonable to fear that they too have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

The rendition of al-Sharif and the five others was most likely set in motion at the beginning of the month, on February 7, 2004, when Yemeni President `Ali `Abdullah Saleh visited Cairo. The first phase occurred on the evening of February 18, 2004, when former Yemeni Brigadier General Ahmad Salim `Ubaid left his eighth-floor apartment in the upper-class Cairo neighborhood of Mohandiseen and began to make his way to Cairo’s Yemeni Club. `Ubaid had been in exile in Cairo for almost a decade, since the end of the civil war in Yemen in 1994. Although he had not been granted political asylum by the Egyptian government, his case was well-known, and it was understood that he could not return to Sanaa for political reasons.¹

The first few steps of the general’s walk were pleasant ones: `Ubaid lived on a quiet, tree-lined street, one which was only occasionally trespassed by passing cars. The neighborhood was one of Cairo’s best: some of Cairo’s most powerful men, including the minister of interior and the former deputy head of State Security Investigations, call it home. Late-model Mercedes and BMWs mixed in with the older Egyptian and Japanese cars parked on the roadside, and Cairo’s one and only shooting club, where Cairo’s elite went to squeeze off a few rounds, was only a few blocks away.

The former brigadier general had been walking for a few blocks when, as he later told his lawyers, he heard someone calling his name. He turned around to find a group of four or five men standing behind him.

“Are you Brigadier General Ahmad Salim `Ubaid?” one of the men asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Please come with us,” the man said.

`Ubaid was put inside a waiting microbus, blindfolded, and driven to an unknown destination. When the blindfold was taken off, he found himself inside a well-furnished room. His captors identified themselves as officers of Egypt’s State Security Investigations (SSI), an arm of the Ministry of Interior.

“You are a guest of State Security,” one of the men said. “Your friend wants to see you.” `Ubaid understood this to be a reference to the Yemeni president, `Ali `Abdullah Saleh. A week later, on or about February 25, `Ubaid was blindfolded again, taken to the airport, put on a plane, and sent back to Yemen. A few days later, the six Egyptians were shipped to Cairo.

The practice of rendering wanted persons to Egypt and other countries in the region, despite the high risk that they will be subjected to torture, dates back to the mid-1990s. In many cases the returning country is a neighboring Arab or South Asian state. In some cases the United States has played a role in the transfer. In most cases there is no indication that any form of judicial procedure, such as a formal extradition request and hearing, was used; even where warrants may have been issued, in the face of Egypt’s terrible record of torture the state holding the suspect should have declined the request, in accordance with international law forbidding any country from sending someone to a country, including his or her country of origin, where he or she will likely be subjected to torture.

United States abuse of detainees in its custody in the “war on terror” has now been well-documented. The cases in this report show that the problem of abuse of suspected Islamist militants is much broader, with deep roots in abusive interrogation practices of Egypt and other governments in the Middle East region. The problem predates the September 11 attacks in the United States, although the practice has increased significantly in response to those attacks.

Most if not all of those forcibly returned to Egypt were suspected of being adherents of militant Islamist groups that have carried out acts of political violence, such as assassinations or attempted assassinations of high officials, as well as attacks that targeted or indiscriminately harmed civilians.

Through interviews with exile activists, Egyptian lawyers, human rights groups, and family members of current detainees, as well as reviews of English and Arabic press accounts, Human Rights Watch has identified at least sixty-threeindividuals who have been rendered to, and in a few cases from, Egypt since 1995 (Appendix I). The actual number of rendered individuals is likely much higher. Cairo-based analysts and lawyers as well as exile Islamist activists who track such returns closely estimate the total number of returnees to be as high as one hundred and fifty to two hundred since September 11, 2001.²

This report describes the cases of five of these men—Muhammad and Hussain al-Zawahiri, Ahmad `Agiza and Muhammad al-Zari`, and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, as well as `Abd al-Salam `Ali al-Hila and former Brigadier General Ahmad Salim `Ubaid, two Yemenis who were abducted in Cairo by security forces and transferred out of the country. Egypt is the common thread linking these cases; although the seven come from different backgrounds, their cases highlight different illegal measures governments have used to apprehend and hold in detention alleged militants.

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif: Al-Sharif’s case is perhaps the most typical. A former high-ranking member of the Islamist insurgency, al-Sharif was likely in the Egyptian government’s sights for years. He had been living without incident in Yemen for some time, and was not taken into custody there until after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Muhammad al-Zawahiri and Hussain al-Zawahiri: Muhammad al-Zawahiri, an alleged ex-militant and a brother of senior al-Qaeda operative Ayman al-Zawahiri, was kidnapped while in the United Arab Emirates on business in early 1999 and returned to Egypt. He was presumed dead until word of his detention was leaked to the Arabic press in early 2004. For more than five years, the Egyptian government refused to answer a single question about al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts, and allowed his family to believe that he had died rather than disclose his continued incarceration. Hussain al-Zawahiri, another brother, was apprehended in 1999 by Malaysian security forces while working in that country and transferred to Egypt in an operation that apparently also involved the CIA, along with Egyptian intelligence. The Egyptian government refused to acknowledge the rendition or inform his family of his whereabouts until he was released, without charge and without any explanation, six months later. According to family members, he is under orders from Egyptian security not to speak about his ordeal.

Ahmad `Agiza and Muhammad al-Zari`: On December 18, 2001, Ahmad `Agiza and Muhammad al-Zari`, two Egyptian asylum seekers who had been living for several years without incident in Sweden, were apprehended by Swedish security forces and within hours transferred to Egypt on a U.S.-government-leased jet. In 2004 `Agiza was convicted before a military tribunal, in proceedings that failed to meet basic fair trial standards, of membership in an organization seeking to overthrow the Egyptian government and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Al-Zari` was released without charge in October 2003 but remains restricted to his village and is forbidden from meeting with journalists or human rights groups.

`Abd al-Salam al-Hila: A Yemeni businessman with ties to Yemeni intelligence, `Abd al-Salam al-Hila was grabbed by Egyptian authorities while in Cairo on business in September 2002, and then handed over to the CIA. Al-Hila was rendered to U.S. custody, and is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His case represents the more direct involvement of the U.S. after September 11, 2001, in which persons have been apprehended without judicial warrant and in a non-combat situation and transferred to U.S. custody. Before the September 11 attacks, the U.S. generally did not take individuals into custody itself, preferring instead to assist in the transfer of an individual to his country of origin. Al-Hila is but one of many who have been picked up in countries all over the world and taken by a circuitous route to Guantanamo. He has yet to be charged with any crime.

General Ahmad Salim `Ubaid: General `Ubaid, since released, remains under close watch in Yemen and has been forbidden from talking to the press about his case. `Ubaid’s case indicates the Egyptian government’s willingness to arrest and return political exiles, individuals who have no alleged connection to any militant group, and whose only “crime” is their political affiliation and their utility in securing the transfer of other wanted persons.