News briefing
By: Committee for Justice
Geneva: January 3, 2024
The Committee for Justice has documented the first case of death inside a detention facility in Egypt in 2024 of a former member of parliament in Badr Prison, who died on Monday, January 1.
– Renewal of detention and health negligence:
CFJ indicated that the case of death was due to the former member of the Egyptian Parliament for Sharkia Governorate, Adel Radwan Othman Mohamed and that he was imprisoned in “Badr 3” prison pending Case No. (14) 1513 of 2022 Deyerb Negm Police Station.
In the same context, Radwan’s lawyer, El-Said Khalaf, indicated that his client was imprisoned pending another case. On August 23, 2020, the Emergency Supreme State Security Misdemeanor Court of the tenth of Ramadan acquitted him, but his detention was renewed again. He was suffering from a deterioration in his health due to his old age, which the court did not consider and continued to renew his detention.
– Refusal of Renewal of detention and demands for investigation:
CFJ reiterates its rejection of the policy of renewal of detention that the Egyptian authorities has been addicted to in their dealings with political prisoners and calls Egypt to abide by the international treaties and covenants it has signed, including the Nelson Mandela Rules (the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners).
CFJ also calls on the Egyptian authorities to open a serious and transparent investigation into the circumstances of this death and to cease its policy of deliberate health negligence against its political detainees.
– 35 deaths in 2023:
During 2023, CFJ documented 35 cases of death inside detention facilities and prisons in Egypt. The most recent case was of a political detainee named Abdel Hai Ahmed Hussein, in Al-Ghorbaniyat prison in the Borg El Arab area, who died on Monday, November 6, and he is from Matrouh governorate.
Accurate information about death cases during detention in Egypt can be obtained through the Justice Watch Archive service provided by CFJ, which contains information about more than 14,000 victims and over 30,000 violations. It also monitors violations inside more than 500 places of detention in Egypt.
