Translated material
Memorial: 18 Russians detained in Egypt are being held in a deportation prison
18 natives of Dagestan detained in Egypt, including nine children, are in a deportation prison at one of the airports in Cairo. This was reported on May 7 by the human rights center "Memorial" with reference to "eyewitnesses".
According to Memorial's sources, the detained Russians were there at least on May 1 and "they were being prepared to be sent home."
“According to one of the eyewitnesses, two of the detainees, a man and a woman, are ill,” human rights activists said.
According to Memorial, the Egyptian authorities regularly carry out such "repressive actions against citizens of post-Soviet countries." Detainees are not given access to the assistance of lawyers and consular officers.
In recent months, mass detentions of this kind have been carried out by the Egyptian special services on several occasions. As we know, another "cleansing operation" with the participation of machine gunners in masks, which led to numerous detentions of citizens of Russia and Tajikistan, took place in one of the quarters of Cairo on the night of May 1-2.
- On May 8, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed to RBC the detention of 17 (not 18) natives of Dagestan, indicating that the Russian embassy "was never officially informed about the reasons for the detention of the Russians"
- The disappearance of 18 natives of Dagestan in Cairo became known at the end of April - this was reported to Memorial and the BBC Russian Service by a relative of the missing. He said that in March, masked gunmen abducted his cousin Sakinat Baysultanov; they asked her about her ex-husband, a member of the terrorist group "Caucasus Emirate". In April, the security forces detained her father-in-law, children, sister with children, as well as four of their countrymen with children.
- After that, the Ren TV channel published material about the incident, in which it stated that the husbands of the detained Russian women were involved in terrorist organizations and explained their detention by the activity of terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula.
- In Iraq, several dozen Russian citizens with children are in custody - family members of killed or arrested militants of the Islamic State. In April about 20 women from Russia were sentenced to life imprisonment .