Mohamed Morsi.
He is being held, Egypt's military says, in a "safe place", although it won't say where.
No charges have been filed, although it's been suggested that Mohamed Morsi could be charged with "conspiracy with foreign actors" or "insulting the judiciary". These circumstances, says Amnesty International, are tantamount to "enforced disappearance".
The mystery over Morsi's where-abouts comes amid new evidence that Egypt's generals are planning a wider crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. This week, army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi called for nationwide rallies on Friday to give the military a mandate to confront what he called "violence and terrorism".
You don't have to approve of what Morsi represented in his year in office – the democratic and other failings of his government – to be concerned about the legal basis of his arrest and those of his key aides.
The disappearance of Morsi is part of a continuing systemic failure of Egypt's transitional institutions and political mechanisms since the revolution that removed Hosni Mubarak.
And without clear mechanisms and strong, legally valid institutions, each group that has tried to exercise power has subverted the courts and the rule of law to its own ends – including Morsi himself, through his extra-legal November decree that put his acts beyond judicial review.
First, it was the army in alliance with the Brotherhood, then the Brotherhood alone, and now it is the army in alliance with the coalition of forces ranged against the Brotherhood.
But although Morsi may have exacerbated Egypt's political crisis, using his victory at the ballot box to justify his pursuit of a disastrous and unpopular agenda, holding him incommunicado only makes Egypt's crisis more fraught in the long run.
Morsi represents a wide constituency. His detention, far from persuading the wider Brotherhood to acquiesce, is likely to be counterproductive.
The release of Morsi and other senior Muslim Brotherhood figures, as demanded by the European Union, should be a question of political self-interest in pursuit of stability (as well as justice) for those now claiming to govern Egypt.
For if one of the lessons of the past year is that Morsi and the Brotherhood could not lead Egypt alone if they alienated other key actors in the country's political landscape, it should be evident that the opposite holds equally true.
Indeed, only two months before July 3, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre suggested that, although Egyptians were deeply pessimistic about the issues, from law and order to the economy, and were increasingly unhappy about the way their new democracy was functioning, the Brotherhood itself was still regarded positively.
And the alternative, in any case, is what? Already, the fact of Morsi's detention, anecdotal evidence suggests, has attracted some to Muslim Brotherhood protests who might once have been more ambivalent.
The detention of Morsi and a crackdown on the Brotherhood cannot bring genuine stability. Nor can a political process be allowed to be directed by the generals who have, thus far, served their own interests in their changing alliances.
The lesson from successful reconciliation processes – including South Africa and Northern Ireland – is that a wide level of inclusion is required. All of which requires de-escalation and Morsi's release. – © Guardian News & Media 2013