An American translator and an Egyptian filmmaker were arrested in Cairo and have been held for three days in an undisclosed location, their lawyer said today.
Ahmed Hassan, a lawyer with the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, told The Associated Press that US citizen Jeremy Hodge, 26, and Egyptian filmmaker Hossam Eddin el-Meneai, 36, were arrested Wednesday before midnight from their apartment in Dokki district in Western Cairo.
He said that officers at the local police station first acknowledged they are holding the two but later denied that they were in custody. It is not immediately clear why the two were held.
The Ministry of the Interior in Cairo declined to comment on the incident.
Hassan said he believes they are being held by the domestic spy agency, National Security. He said he has filed kidnapping reports for the two.
Hassan called the detention part of a "wave of intimidation of journalists" in Egypt.
There has also been a rise of cases where citizens detain journalists and foreigners, reporting them to authorities amid a rising nationalist fervour and panic over foreign plots to destabilise the country.
An official at the American Embassy in Cairo confirmed a US citizen was in detention.
"We are aware that a US citizen has been detained in Egypt and are providing all appropriate consular assistance," the official said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. He had no further comments.
Hodge is a free-lance translator who has worked in Egypt for a number of publications and with Berlin-based Transparency International.
His roommate el-Meneai is a filmmaker, originally from the restive Northern Sinai province where militants have upped their attacks on security and military forces.
A press statement issued by friends of the two included text messages that Hodge sent out after they were detained.
"They're asking Hossam about Sinai and his camera," Hodge wrote. "They're asking me how I know him, and where I learned my Arabic." In another text message, he wrote: "Hossam is being investigated, I'm waiting around."
Hodge suffers from asthma, his friends said. It is not clear if he has access to his medication. In a separate incident, Egyptian artist and filmmaker Aalam Wassef was briefly detained along with a Swiss citizen yesterday, according to lawyers, and was later released without charge.
It was not immediately clear why the two were taken from Wassef's apartment that overlooks Tahrir Square, where rallies are expected on the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising Wednesday.
