CAIRO: Controversy surrounds the disappearance and subsequent return of a 16-year-old Egyptian girl. According to Egyptian police, on Tuesday Nagham al-Helbawy was located and her family was notified of her location after she allegedly ran away from home to be with a man she had met online. Helbawy is the younger sister of Mohamed al-Helbawy, the online coordinator of ultra-conservative Islamist leader and potential presidential candidate Hazem Saleh Abu Ismail. An online campaign had been started after she the young teenager had gone missing on December 29. Some activists have accused Egypt's state security forces of kidnapping her in an effort to crack back at activists. Facebook pages demanding her release were founded while police became involved and started looking for the missing girl, who was abducted from her family's home in Alexandria. She was left alone throughout the day she went missing and when her family returned home, the flat was a mess and a small amount of money was missing. Police said she had met a man online and fled her home after family problems arose, but did not give any details on what problems had arisen or why the house had been ransacked. Police said she was found at al-Nasser Salah Hassan Abdel Moniem's house, a manager at a tourism company and he said that one of his neighbors, Osama Rabea Ismail asked him if the girl would stay with them for a short while. Ismail is the man the girl allegedly ran from home to meet. She was found in the district of Agouza, in Cairo. The ministry of interior said in a statement that the girl admitted that she left her family's house after disputes and that she dose not know why her brother or others suspected that state security being behind her disappearance. “After her disappearance, a few social networking websites circulated false news that the police were behind the girl going missing and that to weaken trust between the police and the people,” read the police statement. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/WfHSY Tags: featured, Kidnapping, Nagham al-Helbawy, Police, Return Section: Egypt, Latest News, Women
