Omani authorities released Egyptian activist Mariam Abdel Baset following her post-childbirth detention inside a military hospital, an escalation trailing the forced deportation and suspected enforced disappearance of her husband in Cairo.
The case exposes how regional mechanisms like the Arab Bureau for Criminal Police are leveraged to bypass international Interpol restrictions against political persecution, highlighting a widening cross-border crackdown on external dissent.
The Law and Democracy Support Foundation (LDSF) announced Sunday evening in a statement that Omani officials permitted Abdel Baset to return to her Muscat residence with her newborn infant. The human rights organization described this as a “positive development” ending a “difficult period” for the mother and child. It demanded that Muscat lift all remaining movement restrictions and guarantee her right to travel.
Prior to her release, the 31-year-old activist, who has maintained legal residency in Oman since 2021, was placed under de facto detention inside the Military Technological and Medical City Hospital. Hospital staff informed her that she was registered under the status of a “prisoner,” though security agencies failed to provide her or her family with any written legal decisions.
Karim Abdelrady, executive director of LDSF and Abdel Baset’s lawyer, told Al Manassa that the judicial proceedings suffered from a complete absence of transparency. He noted that Abdel Baset and her husband, Ahmed Moussa, received only verbal notifications alleging links to Interpol requests prior to Moussa’s sudden expulsion.
The foundation subsequently obtained reliable, informal information confirming that Abdel Baset’s name is entirely absent from international Interpol databases. Abdelrady added that the same applies to Moussa, who was summarily deported to Egypt last April.
The executive director stated that the enforcement measures appear linked to the Arab Bureau for Criminal Police, an agency operating under the Council of Arab Interior Ministers. Human rights lawyers warned that the regional body is systematically used to circumvent international Interpol regulations, which strictly prohibit the use of its mechanisms for cases of a political nature.
The foundation expressed severe concern that Abdel Baset could face an identical repatriation scenario to Egypt, where her husband remains missing. Omani officials had initially told Moussa he would be set free, but security personnel transferred him directly to the airport, where he managed a brief phone call before his forced departure to Cairo.
Following his arrival in Egypt, Moussa’s family lost all contact with him and subsequently filed a formal complaint with the Prosecutor General alleging an enforced disappearance. Abdelrady noted that the restrictions on Abdel Baset had begun to ease gradually over the preceding days, attributing the shift to intense media and human rights attention surrounding the case. She remains vulnerable to a similar outcome, however, having previously been blocked from boarding a flight at Muscat Airport in May.
British human rights lawyer Ben Keith has submitted a formal complaint to the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, which has received an official registration number.
While Omani authorities have promised to issue an official birth certificate for the newborn infant, the issuance of necessary travel documents for Abdel Baset and her children remains unresolved.
