In Egypt, loved ones search for those who didn’t return from protest

About an hour after President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation this month, when other Egyptians were dancing in the streets, Ahmed Amin logged on to a Facebook group he had created two weeks earlier to write a message.

“Tarek, you made it, you made the victory, and I am really proud of you,” Amin wrote to his 36-year-old cousin. He asked God to bring Tarek home safely, and promised to do his part.

Tarek Aktash left home at 10 a.m. Jan. 28, telling his wife he was going to his job as a safety manager at an oil company.

Witnesses said they saw him attending prayers at the Mostafa Mahmoud mosque near Tahrir Square. An acquaintance reported seeing him in the square that night.

But when the curfew began, he didn’t come home. His family assumed he was sleeping in Tahrir Square. All phone services were still down, so they had no way of reaching him.

The family started to worry Saturday when Aktash still hadn’t returned home. Partial phone service had been restored, but calls to his cellphone indicated that it was turned off or out of range.

Since Mubarak’s resignation on Feb. 11, as the military has taken control and tried to restore a sense of normality, the family has been in its own world trying to find its missing son: visiting hospitals, morgues and prisons; contacting police, army and government; using any connection or relationship to find bits of information they have no way of verifying.

It is difficult to know how many families are going through the same search. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information estimated last week that 40 to 50 men were missing. But a list the group provided included almost a dozen who had since been released by authorities and returned to their families.

Executive Director Gamal Eid said many other families probably haven’t contacted his organization to report a missing relative.

The prime minister said Sunday that those being held would be released soon, but didn’t address those whose whereabouts are unknown, Eid said.

A few days after his cousin disappeared, Amin turned to the same social media credited with starting the Egyptian revolution and created a Facebook group that now has nearly 2,500 members.

Despite the near lack of information about him, the family is relatively confident he is in prison somewhere rather than dead. They have chased every rumor.

At one point, they heard that some protesters were being held in Giza, so they drove there. Last Wednesday or Thursday — the days of searching have blended together for them — Amin heard news about dozens of unidentified bodies at one of the morgues. Soon he and another cousin who is a doctor were checking the bodies, some of them already in a state of decay.

“Any little hint, we ran after it,” Amin said.

They have called some offices so many times that at the first mention of “Tarek,” Amin said, people respond, “Tarek Abdel Latif Mohamed El Aktash, we swear he’s not here.”

And they know that the little information they get is not necessarily believable. The father of one of Amin’s colleagues is in the army and recently relayed a message through his daughter that Tarek was OK and would be released soon.

Amin and Aktash’s two older brothers have taken on much of the search. His wife of seven years, Rania Shaheen, is trying to stay strong, especially with two young daughters, and regularly posts on the Facebook group. His father, a former army man, has tried to remain stoic but his mother goes through yelling fits during the day and can’t sleep at night.

Unlike many of the protesters who filled Tahrir Square, propelled by their inability to rent an apartment, get married or find a job, Aktash was well established in a good career and had a family. The youngest of three boys, he was a top student in school and studied engineering in college. His 6-year-old daughter is enrolled in a private German school.

Had he not disappeared that night, Amin said, many members of their family probably would have joined him in the square.

“Tarek was asking for a better life for Egypt,” Amin said. “He believed, ‘My voice will make a difference and I need to go down for my little girls to grow up in a better Egypt.’ ”

raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com