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Mariam Abdelbasette is an Egyptian opposition activist who was held under guard at a military hospital in Muscat from 25 May 2026, having just delivered her child. The Omani authorities said they were giving effect to an INTERPOL Red Notice sought by Egypt.
A Red Notice is a request from one member country, circulated by INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, asking police in other member countries to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition. Ben Keith, the barrister acting for Ms Abdelbasette, applied to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files, the body that supervises the organisation’s handling of personal data, and found no evidence that any notice existed. On what basis the Omani authorities were holding her remains unclear.
This ambiguity places Egypt in a precarious position. If Egypt did seek a notice on these facts, it asked INTERPOL to act on a political case, which is beyond the reach of the organisation. If it did not, then a foreign government confined a woman days after delivering her child on the strength of an Egyptian assertion with nothing to back it.
On 28 August 2026, the Law and Democracy Support Foundation published two communications from six UN mandate holders sent to Egypt and Oman on 18 June 2026, asking both governments to say precisely what INTERPOL material was used against Ms Abdelbasette and her husband.
Ahmed Mousa was deported from Oman to Egypt on 9 April 2026 and has not been seen or heard from since. UN experts have requested disclosure of his whereabouts, his place of detention and the legal basis for the measures taken against him. His family and his lawyer have obtained nothing, despite repeated approaches to the authorities. This treatment raises concerns about Ms Abdelbasette should she be deported. Ben Keith submitted an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, arguing that her deportation would engage the Convention against Torture, to which Egypt and Oman are both parties.
The charges waiting in Egypt include leading a terrorist organisation, spreading false news, unlawful assembly and incitement to civil disobedience. The conduct behind them, as the UN experts describe it, is peaceful online expression and the running of opposition political content from outside the country. Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution forbids the organisation from any intervention in matters of a political nature and Article 2 requires it to act in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, a file of this kind should never have entered the system, if it is indeed there.
IHR Advisors commends the use of UN Special Procedures to investigate this situation and is eager to learn of the outcome in the hope that it may give Ms Abdelbasette and her family the peace and freedom they deserve.
Our work includes requests to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files for access, correction and deletion, pre-emptive submissions filed before a Red Notice is requested, and parallel applications to UN special procedures where removal is imminent. See our INTERPOL and international law practices for the detail.
Our thanks to the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, whose submission produced these communications and whose report on them is available here, and to Middle East Eye, whose coverage of her release can be read here. The UN letters are published in full: Egypt and Oman.
If you have reason to think that INTERPOL holds your data, contact us.
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