Without A Trace

Without a Trace
While the authorities are doggedly tracking down disappearances associated with crime, thousands of missing person cases go unsolved each year as the law, the media and academia turn a blind eye to cases with scarce details or a missing motive. For families with missing children, just knowing would soothe years of mourning.
By Manal el-Jesri



MAHMOUD AHMED MOHAMED and Omm Ahmed live in Warraq, a low-income district near Mohandiseen packed with families, each with its own little joys and miseries. But Abu Ahmed’s home has seen little joy since Ahmed went missing almost four years ago. His younger brother, Moustafa, now 11, has written Ahmed’s name in large colored letters on the inside of the tiny flat’s front door.




“Ahmed, Akhuna, Habibna,” (Ahmed, Our Beloved Brother), the door reads. Ahmed, who would be 17 today if he is still alive, is believed to have been kidnapped, but police have not uncovered any new information about the case since he disappeared on July 20, 2001.

Although the Ministry of Interior is not in the habit of giving out figures, the problem of missing people is believed to be a significant one. Cases with scarce details are so common that journalist Mourad Sobhi, the editor of Al-Ahram’s crime page for the past 23 years, finds nothing to stir his curiosity when faced with another missing person report.

“We get them daily,” the seasoned journalist says. “In fact, we receive several reports of missing people every day. We cannot publish all of them; in fact, there would be no space left for the other stories. We choose one or two every few days.”

According to the annual report of the Ministry of Interior’s General Juvenile Affairs Administration, 2,686 reports of missing juveniles were filed in the year 2001, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Voices Loved, idealized voices Of those who have died, or of thosefor us as lost as the dead

As for adults? There are no figures to speak of, at least not publicly available ones. The figure for minor children emerged from the depths of the library of the National Center for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR). The kindly librarian, Mme. Saneyya, pointed out that the issue of missing people has somehow slipped the minds of the center’s worthy researchers. Although she procured all kinds of indexes (in which the lonely figure was found) that might help develop these cases, there was not a single research paper available at the center, which usually covers everything that has to do with society and crime.


“You will find nothing here. I’m very sorry, darling,” she says.

The Al-Ahram archives shows signs of a similar lack of organization or urgency. Although the newspaper receives countless missing people reports, some of which it publishes, there is no unified file allowing convenient access to reports in the otherwise rich archives. The paper spends resources developing only those cases with enough information to classify as other crimes, including murder, theft, rape or kidnapping.

“We file none of the missing persons reports,” the archivist says, as, with a loud dusty thud, she deposits a huge file marked “Kidnapping in Egypt” on the visitors’ table.

Similarly, the Ministry of Interior’s media center likewise suggests it is not able to provide figures on missing people or dedicated missing people’s bureaus in the nation’s police stations.

What is it about missing people? Is it the sheer size of the country, packed with 72 million people, that makes it intimidating to even consider looking for someone who has been swallowed by the monster? Omm Ahmed and Abu Ahmed are not afraid. They are still looking for their lost boy.

The problem is, according to Abu Ahmed, no one has helped them find him, not even the police.

Following the clues

General Fady El-Habashy, one of the capital’s most prominent lawyers and a retired chief of the Ministry of Interior’s Cairo Criminological Unit, is quick to point out that “of course the Ministry of Interior has a missing people’s department. There is one in every station, and in every sector, and then there is a centralized department that the smaller departments report to.”

El-Habashy, who worked as an investigator for 28 years, points out that missing persons reports are standard forms. Detectives, he says, don’t fuss over them unless they catch the scent of a crime among the particulars.

Usually, a family files a report at the police station if someone has been missing for more than 24 hours, El-Habashy explains. “Be it a child, grown-up, or a mentally disabled person, the family gives the person’s physical description, what he or she was wearing, whether they had something of value on their person. The report is then sent to other departments,” he says.

Sobhi, the Al-Ahram crime page editor, explains that police stations often deal with missing children’s reports as a matter of course. “No investigation is possible when a child is lost. Who do you ask if a child is lost in a place like Ramses Square?” he asks. “You cannot ask the passersby. Children are often lost because of the carelessness of their parents, which is why when they are found, the government charges the mother with negligence.”

Most of these kids, according to Sobhi, belong to low-income families.

According to El-Habashy, missing person’s reports are of utmost importance in identifying anonymous bodies. “When the police find a body, someone who died of natural causes or was killed, they take a picture of this body,” he says. “The picture is then sent to all departments, with the body’s fingerprints. If we find a match, we ask the family to identify the body, and then forensic work starts to determine the cause of death. If the cause is criminal, we start our investigations.”

He remembers a perfect example: “A Bedouin woman found a decapitated body while herding her sheep in a desert area on the Cairo-Suez Road. It was a male’s body, and it was completely naked. We had nothing to identify him with.”

Using police dogs, El-Habashy’s team was able to find the head and neck, which were buried in the same area, albeit at some distance. “We picked up the head, washed it very well with water and then took it to the morgue, where the body was waiting. The doctors were able to sew the neck to the body. Afterwards, we photographed the body, and sent a report to all departments,” he says.


Right away, the body was identified. The man’s family had filed a missing person’s report some time ago and made a positive identification of the remains.

“That was the point where we moved from part one to part two of the [process]: finding out who had killed him. That was quite easy. After questioning the last person who had seen him alive, his best friend, we discovered that it was this friend who had killed him. He wanted to steal his ring, but then had taken the murdered man’s clothes off and separated his head from his body to [prevent] anyone [from] identifying him,” El-Habashy remembers.

He calls this case a model missing person’s case. “The missing person’s bureau [helped]; we used the missing person’s reports to find the family. If there hadn’t been a report, we would not have been able to notify the family or find the murderer,” he points out.

Ahmed’s missing report has graced the walls of Egypt’s police stations since July 2001. No one has had any luck in finding him yet.

“I want my son. Bring him to me dead or alive,” is his father’s mantra. He simply wants to know.


Into thin air

Journalist Mohamed Abdel-Bari, crime editor of Al-Ahram Al-Masaii newspaper since it first rolled off the presses in 1990, has seen many cases of missing people during his 15-year career covering crime.

“I am in a constant state of amazement at the intricacies of the human psyche,” Abdel-Bari says. “Each case brings something new, and each is a world apart. Hundreds of crimes take place everyday, but since each person is unique, so is each crime.”

He is quick to add, however, that not everyone who has gone missing is missing because a crime is involved. Like any good investigative reporter, Abdel-Bari can usually sense whether a crime is involved or not. He classifies missing persons into different categories.

“The first category includes those who disappear voluntarily,” he says. “This takes place a lot amongst teenagers, both male and female. Between the ages of 14 and 21, youths develop a heightened sense of self. If they feel unhappy or dissatisfied with their social surroundings, they decide to leave the house and go somewhere else.


“The second category involves people who go missing involuntarily. Many of these individuals are mentally disabled. According to the last figure released by the NCSCR, 1.5 percent of Egypt’s population is mentally disabled. Children also belong to this category,” he says.

Abdel-Bari remembers the case of a little girl who was found on the beach in Damietta. The chief of police took her in, and the newspaper’s Damietta correspondent sent the girl’s story and pictures in to the Cairo office.

“We were able to find her parents, who had been looking for her. The tragedy of a lost child is a great one, and is repeated daily. In Egypt, we have mulids [celebrations, which take place in every governorate]. And an inherent element in every mulid is the tragedy of lost children. Salah Jahine, the great poet, even wrote about it in his famous operetta El-Leila El-Kebeira (The Big Night),” he says.

A third category of cases, Abdel-Bari continues, are those who disappear because of coercion victims of kidnappings. Sobhi, Abdel-Bari’s colleague from the mother newspaper, points out that kidnapping children is not uncommon, although the issue cannot be called a phenomenon.

“Children are often kidnapped to join beggars’ bands, or to help traffic drugs or smuggle goods. These children are often terrorized into staying with their abductors,” he says.


Although the cases are relatively few in number, Abdel-Bari explains, “kidnapping, from what I see, is often just the beginning. It usually leads to other crimes, such as murder, rape or both. And because the cases are few, they cause a stir on the streets.”

This is why the police pay extra attention to cases of abduction, Sobhi explains.

“Such crimes make people fear the streets. They fear for their womenfolk, their honor. This is an oriental society, and honor is of the utmost importance. It is for this reason that the police do their utmost to solve these mysteries,” he says.

One of the most recent cases is that of Fatma Ali Hammouda, 21, who was kidnapped from a busy Nasr City street in January. On the twenty-first of that month, her mother, Zeinab El-Sayyed Abdel-Hamid, filed a report that her daughter had failed to return home and that she had received a phone call from someone asking for LE 200,000 in ransom in exchange for her daughter.

“The mother knew right away that her old driver was probably behind the case. Something in the phone call alerted her to the possibility, so when she told this to the police, they started investigating and were able to bring the girl back after three days,” Abdel-Bari says.


El-Habashy calls kidnapping for ransom a crime like any other. He is reluctant to give it too much attention and believes the media should stop making an issue of the infrequent cases that are often solved within days.

“Kidnapping is not a problem in Egypt,” El-Habashy says. “Our police are too clever. They are better than the biggest criminal investigation units in the world.”

Abdel-Bari agrees, and points out that the police often pay a lot more attention to cases of missing people when there is a possibility of criminal intent, and especially when the missing person is wealthy.

In such cases, the crime is summarily solved and the person is found.

Hanaa’s dilemma

Sometimes, though, only the murderer is found and never the missing person. Take the case of Hanaa Abdel-Naeim’s husband, for example. The wealthy contractor left his home one night in 1999 and hasn’t been heard from since. Hanaa is currently serving the fourth year of a life sentence, having been convicted of murdering him and hiding his body with the help of her lover, the downstairs greengrocer.

Hanaa, 40, used to be a well-off Nasr City physician. Today, she is a convicted murderess, despite the absence of a body. The social worker at the Qanatir Women’s Prison says that the popular belief is that Hanaa used her medical know-how to dispose of the body.

“She dissolved him in acid. This is why no trace of him was ever found,” she suggests.

Hanaa, on the other hand, denies the accusations hotly as her tears flow freely. A tall woman, Hanaa keeps her dark glasses on at all times, although they have become crooked. She wears her white scarf differently from the rest of the inmates, which gives her the look of a hospital matron. Despite the moving way she tells her story, Hanaa’s looks don’t help her. Despite the tears and the blotchy face, there is something hard as nails about this prisoner.

“I did not kill my husband,” Hanaa begins. “We had been married since ’88, and we have one son. My husband was a general manager in a cement company and he had many enemies. One day six years ago, he received a phone call and had to go out. He never came back. I looked for him everywhere, and when I lost hope I rented out our flat. I needed money to pay for my son’s private school. I also applied for an exceptional pension.”

“Three years and one month later, and eleven months before it was possible for my son to claim his inheritance, my in-laws accused me of having killed my husband,” she continues. “I was taken to Almaza [police] station, where I was kept for a few days. No one knew anything about me. They wanted me to confess to having poisoned and buried my husband.”

“They also questioned the guy from the fruit shop downstairs. They wanted him to confess to having been my lover,” she alleges. “They said they had tapes, but no one heard them. The guy was only 20, almost half my age, and they made him confess that I had asked him to bury my husband, but that he was too scared to do it.”

Hanaa’s bawwab told the police he had seen her help her husband, who was in great pain, into the car, and that she drove back without him.

Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; Sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.
Hanaa alleges that both the bawwab and the greengrocer were frightened into testifying against her. The grocer, she says, showed the police a place in the desert, where he says she told him to help her bury her husband’s body. “The police took me to the location and kept saying: ‘Just you wait, we’ll find a bone or some hair now.’ They could not find a thing. There was no body, none of the witnesses showed up at the trial and I did not confess to murder,” Hanaa continues.

The judge told her, she claims: “Hanaa, we sent your papers to the Mufti [for a ruling on whether capital punishment was warranted in the case] but the Mufti ruled against your execution. He says there is no proof that you killed your husband. We are giving you a life sentence.”

“I believe my husband’s family bribed a lot of people to get me here,” she alleges. “They want to get their hands on my husband’s LE 500,000 apartment in Nasr City. They do not care about him or about his son, who has had to [leave] his private school now that I’m here.”

Although El-Habashy cannot recall Hanaa’s case, he is amazed that she got a life sentence despite the fact that her husband’s body was never found.

“There must be a body for there to be a sentence. Without a body there is no crime,” he says. Hanaa, detained in the murderer’s ward at Al-Qanatir, is constantly hoping the prosecutor general will look into her case again and order a retrial.

Her husband is still missing.

Legal Lessons

Had Hanaa’s in-laws waited a few more months, she would have been able to obtain a judge’s decree declaring her husband legally dead. According to El-Habashy, a legally missing person is someone about whom “nothing is known He is someone whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose life or death cannot be determined.”

The lawyer explains that those who are lost in battle, or lost in plane crashes or shipwrecks belong to a different category.

“In this case, the person is considered dead after one year from the date he first went missing,” he says. “The Prime Minister or Minister of Defense issues a decree declaring the person officially dead. As a consequence, the person’s estate can be divided accordingly. His wife is considered a widow.”

A missing person, on the other hand, who disappeared under normal circumstances, is declared dead after four years.

“According to Article 22 (amended) of Law 103 for the year 1958, a judge, the Prime Minister or Minister of Defense can issue a decree declaring the person dead after sufficient investigations are carried out to ensure that this person has most probably perished,” El-Habashy says.

What Happened to Ahmed

In three months, Ahmed will have been missing for four years. But in this case, no one is in a hurry to declare him dead, his parents least of all.

“The police station once sent for us to look at a picture of a body they found. God rest his soul, his face was all gone. He was thin, and really tall. He was also very dark. It wasn’t Ahmed. Ahmed is short, like his father,” Omm Ahmed says. She points to a mirror, trying to show the real height of her missing boy. “Ahmed always complained about this mirror. It had a shelf, here, you can see the traces. He kept bumping his head on the shelf.” She bursts into tears as she says, “He would tell me ‘Remove this thing!’ as he jumped up and down in pain.”

Although Ahmed has been gone for years, his parents have not lost hope of one day finding him. “You don’t know what happens to me whenever it rains, or whenever it is too hot? I wonder how Ahmed is doing. He was sick, he had a chest allergy. I brought him chest medications every month. My son was kind, he never hurt anyone,” Omm Ahmed says.

Living in an area overlooked by the state, where streets are not paved and buildings have no numbers, leaning against each other like a scary set of dominoes, one more lost kid means nothing except to the people directly involved in the tragedy.

Ahmed’s parents, his brother Moustafa, his married sister Ghada, 19, and his new nephew Ahmed (his namesake) all live in a tiny two-room apartment, never giving up hope for any news of Ahmed. A section of the only closet in the house is kept for Ahmed’s things.

“I don’t wash his clothes. It is the only way I have of keeping his smell in the house. Once, his brother reached for Ahmed’s jeans suit. I screamed and snatched it out of his hands. His sister remonstrated that I should not do this. They are brothers after all. She does not understand. If I were to let him wear it, I would have to wash it. What will I have then? Nothing,” she says.

Omm Ahmed wears mourning clothes. “I know he is not dead. I am sure of it. If he were dead I would feel it. But I wear black because I’m sad. I am not able to fill my eyes with the sight of him, am I? For whom shall I wear colors?” she asks.

The last time she saw him was on July 20, 2001.

“It was the day right after his birthday. He had just turned 13. He went down to buy a bag of chips, and never came back,” Om Ahmed says.

And, with their sound, for a moment returnSounds from our life’s first poetry Like distant music fading away at night.
His father, Mahmoud Ahmed Mohamed Bayyoumi, picks up the story here. Abu Ahmed, as he prefers to be called, works as a car surugy (upholsterer) in Wekalet El-Balah. Short and thin, Abu Ahmed seems to survive on his anger, which he keeps fueled by remembering what happened to his son. Although he does not cry like his wife, whose eyes are seldom dry, Mahmoud’s eyes speak volumes. You can see the loss and pain he has gone through from the minute you set eyes on his tense frame. Obviously a gentle person, Abu Ahmed’s voice turns to shouting at times.

“I came back from work at 10pm on Friday, July 20th. Mostafa and Ghada were alone, I asked them where Ahmed and his mother were, and they said, ‘Mother is looking for Ahmed.’ They said he had not come back since the afternoon. A little later, Omm Ahmed came back. She was screaming and crying. I went out to look for him, and a kid’s neighbor said he had seen him with a boy called Hani.”

At this point, the story becomes too difficult for Abu Ahmed. “I hate saying this boy’s name. His name is Devil, Damned Devil,” he says. Om Ahmed agrees: “He is a bad kid. He sleeps on sidewalks.”

The family had never heard of the boy before. A newcomer to the area, he lived nearby with his mother. On going to ask him about Ahmed, Hani (14 at the time) denied he had seen him.

“We kept looking, and found nothing. The next day we went to Hani’s house again,” Abu Ahmed remembers. After much cajoling, Hani told the father and his neighbors that Ahmed had drowned in the Nile. It was then that Abu Ahmed went crazy, fainting and then waking up crying. “I slapped my own face like a woman. We went to the police and started looking for his body,” he remembers.

Ahmed’s mother cries as she remembers that difficult moment. “Ahmed never swam in the Nile. He never even strayed away from home. He and Moustafa used to play downstairs near the house. The boy [Hani] was lying,” she says.

For five days, police and the river authorities looked for Ahmed’s body, thinking he had drowned.

“On the fifth day, my wife’s nephew came running to us. He said he had received a call from Ahmed. He swore Ahmed had told him he had been kidnapped,” Mahmoud says. Omm Ahmed continues: “My nephew was in the last year of college, studying commerce. He is not a child. He refused to believe Ahmed at first, telling him that Ahmed is dead. Ahmed told him my name, and the name of Khaled’s [the nephew’s] mother. Nobody knows our names. They know me as Omm Ahmed.”

The family rushed to the telephone centrale, where they urged the person in charge to trace the number that had just called the uncle’s line. He refused, they allege, demanding an order from the Public Prosecutor’s Office before doing so.

Then they rushed to Hani’s house and took him to the Warraq Police Station.

“After many threats, the boy confessed he had sold Ahmed to a man called Mohamed Khalil for LE 20,” Abu Ahmed claims. According to them, Hani was asked by Khalil, who sold tissue paper boxes by the Imbaba railways, to get him a clean boy who went to school. He needed someone to help him, Hani claimed. It took Hani three days to befriend Ahmed and convince him to take that fateful walk.

“The man took Ahmed, and when Ahmed called out for help, asking Hani to stay with him, the man beat him up, threatening him with a pocket-knife,” Omm Ahmed says.

The idea was, obviously, to catch the man and find Ahmed.

“The police force went to look for him at 2 am. He was gone by then, so they told us to wait for him. The police officer said, ‘You are investigators now. When you see him, call me,’” Mahmoud remembers. At dawn, the accused came to assume his spot. “We called the station, but the officer said wait. I couldn’t wait. I went to the station to urge them to come, but they told me ‘No, we will go at night.’ It was as if they wanted him to escape. I couldn’t wait. My neighbors, relatives and I picked him up ourselves. We took him to the officer.”

Hani and Khalil were confronted with each other, but the man kept insisting he had nothing to do with Ahmed’s disappearance, and Hani kept insisting he was the right guy. “At that point, Hani broke down and said the man also used to do bad things to him for LE 5. I went crazy. Is this why they took my son?” Abu Ahmed says.

Khalil was kept in custody for four days, during which Ahmed’s parents talk of four lawyers driving expensive cars who kept visiting the prisoner, and of a rich lady wearing lots of gold who came to visit Khalil laden with a big bag of canned food and cigarettes.

“Nobody asked why this man, who sold tissues for a living, had such rich connections,” Abu Ahmed says. Omm Ahmed remembers how shocked she was that anyone would want to defend that criminal. “I went in and held each lawyer by his clothes, asking them ‘Did this man steal a television set? No, he stole my son. How can you defend him?’” she asked.

The man was released after four days, and the police officer told Abu Ahmed to follow him around.

His burial, the poorest possible, took place here.A few hours before dying he whispered somethingAbout ‘home’, about ‘very old parents.’But nobody knew who they were.
“He said that he may be able to get me my son back.” Mahmoud alleges. “So I stayed near him. I waited around as he worked, and noticed how he wore different expensive clothes every day. I bought him cigarettes and tea, and waited to see my son. When all failed, I went to the district police. They picked him up again, and they got that devil Hani too. But when questioning them, they did not lay a finger on the man. They then wrote their report, in which they said that, according to their investigations, Hani was a bad student who had escaped because he hated his job. They mentioned nothing about the man.”

The police officer, they allege, was later suspended when he was accused of accepting bribes, a case that has nothing with Ahmed. “We saw him with handcuffs around his wrists,” the mother remembers.

The parents say they were lucky because the case was turned over to the district prosecutor, Sherif Tawfik, whom they call a great man.

“He refused to take the police report for granted. He re-questioned Hani and Khalil,” Abu Ahmed remembers. Khalil was kept in custody for nine months, but was left to go free when the investigations led to nothing.

Abu Ahmed claims he has kept an eye on Khalil, although the man is not staying with his family in Rod El-Farag anymore. Three months ago, Abu Ahmed filed a complaint in the office of the Prosecutor General Maher Abdel-Wahed, who ordered a re-opening of the investigations.

“Two months ago the new district attorney told me to stop going to people in high places. I said, ‘Whom do you mean there is no one higher than God the almighty.’ He also told me to stop talking to the press. He asked, ‘What do you want?’ I said I want my son. I want him dead or alive. He said, ‘Wait for just one month.’ We’ll see, I am going to him this coming Tuesday,” Abu Ahmed says.

Abu Ahmed has lost faith in the system. This is why when some crooks pretended to be psychics and promised to show him Ahmed, he and his wife believed them.

“They wanted LE 7,000. I went to my brothers and asked for money. They said let them show us Ahmed first, and then we will give them his weight in gold. I sold my gold bracelets. They took Abu Ahmed to a café and told him to wait, then they said Ahmed ran away when he saw him,” the mother says.

Despite her black clothes, Omm Ahmed lives in the hope of seeing her son one last time.

“But I have a feeling I will not see him again. I believe he will be found after I die. Every time some of these crooks give us some hope, I change my clothes to colored ones. I say, ‘My life will be happy again.’ I wait for him. Once, my legs became paralyzed, because once again our only hope was crushed.”

Abu Ahmed is sure his son is alive, too. He vows he will not believe the crooks again.

“We believe in God, we really do. He alone can bring Ahmed back,” he says. The father believes his son to be a victim of some gang. “It is either drugs or human body parts,” he theorizes. He often dreams of his son too: “I get good signs; something to do with the number three. He will come back, maybe after three weeks, or three years. I just know he will come back. May God rest my mind!” he shouts.