Egypt agreed on Wednesday to delay the deportations of more than 600 Sudanese detained after police forcibly broke up a protest outside the United Nations refugee agency’s offices in Cairo, the UNHCR said.
”They will postpone the deportations that were planned for tomorrow,” said Astrid van Genderen Stort, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The deportations will be put off for three days, she said.
Egypt arrested over 2 000 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers in the wake of last week’s violent clashes that left about 28 Sudanese dead and hundreds injured and has been holding them in military camps around the city.
”We have appealed for days now to have access to the people in the military centres, so we are going to get this access tomorrow [Thursday], apparently,” Stort said.
”We will have access for three days to assess the status of the people in the centres, to assess their legal status and to see if there are people that are in need of international protection,” she added.
The Egyptian authorities had said they would begin deporting about 654 Sudanese on Thursday.
Human rights groups had expressed concern for the safety of those being returned, many of whom lost their documents when Egyptian security forces stormed the park where they had been protesting for months. – Sapa-AFP