The anti-terrorism law that was ratified last week included several articles that were contested for months after the draft bill circulated earlier this summer, and which critics had hoped to see either amended or taken out altogether.

The Ministry of Interior announced this week the arrest of alleged members of two “terrorist” cells in what could possibly be the first implementation of the newly passed counter-terrorism law, ratified by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.

Since May, the hashtag #Al-Ikhtifa_al-Qasri_Garima (#Forced_Disappearance_Is_A_Crime) has been filling social media pages, and blogs are documenting forced disappearance and arrests of young adults as part of security campaigns that started in May in Cairo and in other governorates. Over three months have passed without knowing the detention place or details about the victims.  

Many Egyptians find it hard to understand how their countrymen in the army and police could take part in a brutal act like the violent breakup of the sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adawiyah and al-Nahdah squares.

“His leg is broken. I cannot leave him here,” said a doctor in makeshift hospital in Rabaa al-Adawiya square to a special forces officer.

Two years after the bloody dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya protest camp that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in August 2013, the Egyptian state insists on one culprit for the violence: the Muslim Brotherhood.

While some in Egypt were celebrating the new Suez Canal bypass, Egyptian security forces were reportedly “eliminating” five citizens in Fayyum, southwest of Cairo. It has been claimed the deceased were members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Kalthoum, a Sudanese mother of four from the Nuba Mountains, has lived in Cairo for more than 10 years. She has gained from and complained about unstable assistance from international organisations. She has worked informally as a domestic worker. She has been detained.

On 6 August, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi stood by the banks of the new $8bn Suez Canal channel, and spoke to world leaders, television cameras, and the Egyptian people. President Al-Sisi spoke of how the nation constructed its “gift to the world for the sake of humanity”, working while the “powers …

Inside a filthy police van near Al-Azhar University an officer points to a fragment of light shining through a tiny opening: “See this bit of sun?” he asks Amena Yasser and the 16 other young men and women inside. “We’re going to put you behind it and we’ll see if …