Egypt police raid offices of rights group linked to dead student

The offices of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), an NGO that tracks forced disappearances, were raided by security officials on Thursday, a researcher for the group said.

Mina Thabet of ECRF said four men in civilian clothing who claimed to be from the ministry of investment came to the organisation’s headquarters in Cairo and inquired about its executive director, Mohamed Lotfy.

"One of them, who appeared to be [a] police officer in plain clothes, had Lotfy's new phone number; he called him and asked him to come to the office earlier than usual," Thabet wrote on Facebook.

He added that an ECRF attorney arrived and asked the men for identification and a search warrant after they asked to look around the office.

"Our lawyer refused their [request] to search, and they went out," Thabet said.

Ahmad Abdullah, head of ECRF’s board of trustees, said the group believes at least one of the men was a police officer because an ECRF lawyer saw a picture of him in uniform when he handed him his phone.

Lawyers linked to ECRF are representing the family of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, who was murdered in Egypt in January. Details of the death of the 28-year-old, who was conducting research on trade unions in Cairo, are still a mystery.

Regeni’s corpse was found alongside a desert road on the outskirts of Cairo in February. It showed signs of vicious torture. Media reports claim that he was in police custody before his death, but the authorities deny any involvement in the slaying.

Egypt has cracked down on dissent under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with hundreds of rights activists and members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood arrested and brought to trial by the government.