“This begging thing is very difficult for all of us, as I am sure it is for you, but what are we going to do? We need each and everyone of you to feel and sympathize. “We need people to stand in solidarity with Seif because you have all, unfortunately, become dead-alive. I never understood that term, but I totally get it now. I see it and I feel it. Everyone is truly dead, but why shouldn’t we be? When everything around us has died?” Nivan Bedour implored her friends and followers in a Facebook post dated December 8th, three months after her brother Seif’s arrest. Nivan is one of many supplicants who have taken to Egyptian social media in recent years to campaign for the release of a loved one. And yet Seif’s case is particularly alarming. Arrested in August 2020, he has been jailed for over four months without charge. According to his family, the 21-year-old was accompanying a friend to the Qasr El-Nil police station when authorities decided to detain him. It all started when an Egyptian-American friend of Seif’s was escorted to the precinct by a…
A Witness to Nothing: How Seif Bedour Became Entangled in the Fairmont Case
January 2, 2021
