When a group of students from Kazakhstan traveled to Egypt to improve on their Arabic language skills, the last thing they could have expected was to land up in a Cairo jail.
The almost two-week ordeal of a group of six students finally came to a close this week when the Foreign Ministry sent a protest note to Egypt about their detention, which still remains a complete mystery.
“In the nearest future, they will return to Kazakhstan. The reasons for their detention … have not yet been disclosed,” foreign ministry spokesman Anuar Zhainakov said on Facebook on August 2.
Zhainakov said Egypt has promised to provide an explanation at some later date.
The Foreign Ministry said the students were detained by Egyptians security service agents on the night of July 19. Relatives only learned about their disappearance on July 24, when they began to worry about their inability to get in touch with the young men.
Two people in the group have been named as 23-year old Kanat Berik and 22-year old Yelaman Zhazylhan, post-graduate students of Turkish and Arabic at Almaty’s Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages. They flew to Cairo on July 11 for language courses and had moved in to an apartment with four Kazakhstani acquaintances, according to RFE/RL’s Kazakhstan service.
Zhainakov said the names of the other four students have not been disclosed as their relatives have not been in touch with the Foreign Ministry.