Freedom House Egypt’s request and then transferring them within hours or days into Egyptian custody with only the barest fig leaf of a bureaucratic process, and without any opportunity to challenge their detention or deportation. Malaysia and Kuwait were mass cases, in which authorities transferred four and eight individuals, respectively, at the same time.331 In the case of Kuwait, at least one of the men was handed over on the basis of a conviction for participating in a protest in Egypt in 2016, even though he had not been in the country during that time.332 Egypt’s pursuit has sometimes reached exiles in countries that do not support the government’s ongoing crackdown. In January 2019, Mohamed Abdelhafiz was deported from an airport in Turkey to Egypt, allegedly after arriving in the country without an appropriate visa. Authorities in Turkey, which has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in exile and hosts thousands of its members, suspended eight police officers and opened an investigation into the deportation.333 Interpol abuse has also been a feature of regional governments’ pursuit of dissidents abroad: authorities in Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE, Turkey, and Iran have all abused Interpol to detain opponents. Mohamed Mahsoub, an Egyptian opposition politician, was detained in Italy in August 2018 on the basis of an Interpol Red Notice; he was released after one day in detention.334 Turkey detained television presenter Hisham Abdullah under similar circumstances in December 2018.335 Other countries in the region are also engaged in campaigns of transnational repression. Officials in Bahrain famously used Interpol to have soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who had fled the country and become a refugee in Australia, detained in Thailand in November 2018. He was held for 76 days and released only after an international outcry.336 Egypt accounts for 42 physical incidents in the time period under review. It is quite possible that the scale of renditions and unlawful deportations between countries in the Gulf region, in particular, is even larger than discussed here. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regional cooperation mechanism includes a 2004 antiterrorism agreement, a 2012 joint security agreement, and a series of handwritten agreements signed in 2013 and 2014.337 Taken together, the agreements oblige the members of the GCC—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE—to cooperate against terrorist threats, but also critics of their respective regimes. Documented renditions between these states appear extremely informal; in the absence of any legal transparency, it is possible that more transfers take place without any external knowledge. freedomhouse.org 51