It is not clear what happened last year to Yann Bourdon, whose family had speculated he may have been detained by Egyptian security services. The Sorbonne graduate student, who disappeared while on a year-long backpacking trip, has refused to discuss his disappearance with the media or share details of his return to France.
Sarah Sakouti, legal adviser to the Geneva-based Justice Commission, which has pressed Egyptian and French authorities to investigate the 27-year-old’s disappearance, said Bourdon flew from Cairo to Paris on August 10.
A day earlier, Bourdon had called his sister in Paris from the French consulate in Cairo, Sakuti told The Associated Press. On the same day, the Egyptian state security services had announced that they would facilitate Bourdon’s return to Paris.
Before that, Bourdon was last heard from by his family and friends in August 2021.
After months of silence and stonewalling by Egyptian authorities, Bourdon’s distraught family decided to go public and used Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s official visit to Paris on July 22 to press for an investigation.
They stood on a Paris sidewalk and held up placards asking: “Where is Jean Bourdon, President Sisi?” before a motorcade drove past El-Sisi to a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
International rights organizations have recorded an increasing number of enforced disappearances by the Egyptian authorities in recent years. Egypt’s 2011 popular uprising against Hosni Mubarak, the former longtime president, stemmed from demands for an end to police brutality and extrajudicial practices.
Since El-Sisi came to power in 2014, most of the freedoms gained after the 2011 uprising have been rolled back. The government conducted a widespread crackdown on dissent, imprisoning thousands of people — many of them without trial.
The vast majority of prisoners were Egyptian citizens.
