CAIRO: Three students affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) who disappeared last month, managed to sneak out a message saying they have been held in Tora Prison for 11 days, Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud told Daily News Egypt. They also said that a fourth student, Mohammed Assem, is being held with them. Although they now know their location, their physical condition is still unclear, said Abdel Maqsoud, and no one is sure that all of them are still alive. Six Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated men were reportedly arrested without charge by state security on July 18 and three of them have since completely disappeared, said MB members. A rumor spread that one of the students, Mohammed Farid, was tortured to death. Four of the students were reportedly arrested while on summer vacation in Agami. The fifth was arrested during a house search, and the last in Sidi Bishr leaving his computer course. Students Mohammed Emam, Mustafa Emam, and Mohammed Farid, have not been seen or heard from since their arrest. The Emam s are brothers. They have not yet been charged with any crime. This is a catastrophe, a disaster, Ibrahim Hodaiby, director of Ikhwan.net told Daily News Egypt. Recently the regime has gone out of its mind, continued Hodaiby. "There are military tribunals, torture, crackdowns, and now the disappearance of these students. State Security has not even attempted to explain what happened. I thought that these times were over, that they ended with [Gamal Abdel] Nasser, but apparently not. At press time, the Ministry of the Interior had still refused to comment, stating again that it does not speak about Brotherhood-related issues to the press. The only official action taken, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, was that the public prosecutor of Alexandria tasked lawyer Yasir Rafai with investigating the issue. MB lawyer Khalaf Ahmed, who is handling the student s case, told Daily News Egypt that repeated pleas and official inquiries, including requests for help from the National Council for Human Rights and telegrams to President Hosni Mubarak, fell on deaf ears. The situation has elicited fiery rhetoric from the Brotherhood. Brotherhood MP Hamdi Hassan alleged to Daily News Egypt that that the government inflicted severe torture on them and is hiding them until the marks disappear.
