Nada Mougheeth, the wife of detained Egyptian cartoonist Ashraf Omar, was arrested by the country’s security forces on Monday, according to lawyer Khaled Ali.
Mougheeth’s abduction comes a month following a podcast interview in which she revealed details of her husband’s arrest.
Her interviewer was also arrested, according to Zat Masr, the platform where the podcast was aired.
According to Ali, men claiming to be from Egypt’s State Security Prosecution showed up in front of Mougheeth’s home in the morning and took her with them.
“This is all the information we have about her so far,” Ali said on Facebook. “We are currently investigating the entity the two men work for, the place they took her to, and the reasons for that.”
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It was later revealed that Mougheeth was taken to the Supreme State Security Prosecution in Cairo’s Fifth District neighbourhood, and that her defence team were waiting to be allowed entry and attend the investigation with her.
Omar, arrested in July, had his detention repeatedly extended, with the latest being an extension of 45 days on 10 December.
Campaigners and media outlets believe his detention to be related to his latest caricatures.
In one of them, he criticised Egypt’s plan to build a monorail in Cairo as citizens struggle with power cuts while in another, he directly called out the government’s alleged mishandling of Egypt’s economic woes.
Cartooning for Peace, an international organisation defending cartoonists around the world, said it is “alarmed by the extension of his pre-trial detention and the absence of any guarantee of his rights to a fair trial”.
