Egyptian youths protesting Rafah closure leave without a trace

Earlier, 27-year-old Muhsin Mustafa and his 23-year-old cousin Ahmed Sharif posted videos on their social media pages of an attack on a police station in the Ma'sar district. They claimed that those who were dissatisfied with the closure of the Rafah border crossing between Palestine and Egypt and the siege of Gaza were being severely tortured and even killed in police stations. The two activists added that they wanted to record these incidents and bring them to the public.

After this incident, Muhsin and Sharif went missing.

The Egyptian Ministry of Interior has said that the videos are fake footage produced by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights confirmed the authenticity of the videos.

One of the young men who attacked the police station, Muhsin Mustafa, was himself captured and tortured by security forces in 2020 while searching for his relative. After his release, he was required to register with the police every month. A source close to his family said Muhsin felt deeply humiliated and was “very angry.”

All the men in the family were arrested after the attack. The family itself has been placed under unofficial house arrest and is under constant surveillance. The government has not acknowledged the attack, raising serious concerns about the fate of the missing youth.

These unfortunate events in Egypt come at a time when civilians in Gaza are starving to death and public discontent is growing over Cairo's lack of urgency to open the Rafah border crossing and deliver humanitarian aid.