CAIRO: Six political activists were detained early Friday after meeting with Mohamed ElBaradei, according to a statement issued by the April 6 Youth Movement. The activists include Amr Ezz and Tarek El Khouly, who are both members of April 6 Youth Movement. “We have no information on who detained them or why,” the movement's media coordinator, Injy Hamdi, told Daily News Egypt. The activists met with ElBaradei to discuss the current situation in Egypt and then went to a small café in Fasail where they were last seen, according to Hamdi. Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Vice President Omar Suleiman said that they were willing to initiate a dialogue with the youth protesting in Tahrir Square on Thursday. “[These arrests] confirm what Ahmed Shafiq said about initiating a dialogue with the youth,” the April 6 statement read. Suleiman added that all those who have been detained in the protests without any criminal charges would be released promptly. There have been many reports of missing people since the Jan. 25 uprising in Egypt, most prominently Google Marketing Manager and political activist Wael Ghoneim and the general coordinator of April 6 Youth Movement Ahmed Maher. However, Hamdi said that Maher wasn't detained or missing, but his mobile phone was disconnected like many other April 6 members, which made it very difficult to reach him. The April 6 Youth Movement accused the government of deliberately disconnecting the mobile phones of its most prominent members including Maher and the movement's official spokesperson Mohamed Adel, to prevent them from communicating with protesters during the protests. A video posted on Youtube shows Ghoneim being taken by plain clothed police officers to an undisclosed area during an anti-government protest in front of the Journalists' Syndicate last week. Many activists have been calling for Ghoneim to represent the anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square through twitter, in a bid to force security forces to release him.
