Cairo: 13 June 2018

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) today strongly condemned banning Dr. Manar al-Tantawi, the wife of prisoner of conscience Hisham Jaafar, from traveling to Kuwait to visit her son, by Cairo Airport security bodies, who held her for two and a half before allowing her to return home without her passport, which was confiscated without a legal pretext.

Dr. Manar al-Tantawi headed to Cairo Airport to visit her son in Kuwait, and as she was completing her travel procedures, the border control officer informed her that she was banned from traveling, and she was detained at the National Security Office, where she was informed by the officers that she was banned from traveling without giving reasons, then in violation of the law, they also seized her passport, which is a police measure based on force and not on any law.

Although the National Security officers claim that she should go to the nearest National Security headquarters two weeks later to take back her passport, ANHRI strongly condemns this travel ban and considers the confiscation of the passport to be a crime that wastes the rule of law and establishes for a police behavior that was dominant under former dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

ANHRI is wondering, is there an official in President Sisi’s regime who dares to deny such flagrant police practices? Is this the state that the President claims it is a state of law?