News briefing
By: Committee for Justice
Geneva: November 7, 2023
The Committee for Justice has documented a new case of death inside a detention facility in Egypt of a political detainee named Abdul Hay Ahmed Hussein. He passed away on Monday, November 6, while being held in Al-Gharbaniyat prison in Borg El Arab. Originally from Matrouh Governorate, Abdul Hay had been arrested in a political case approximately a year ago.
Demands for Investigation and Improvement of Living Conditions for Political Detainees:
CFJ holds the Egyptian Ministry of Interior and the Prisons Authority fully responsible for his death and calls for transparent and impartial investigations into the circumstances and causes of the death, as well as the identification of those responsible and preventing them from impunity. CFJ also urges the Egyptian authorities to respect and implement international agreements and treaties, including the Nelson Mandela Rules for the protection of persons deprived of their liberty, and relevant international conventions and covenants.
35 Deaths in 2023:
With the above case, the number of deaths documented by CFJ within Egyptian prisons and detention facilities since the beginning of 2023 has risen to 35 cases. The most recent case was of a political detainee Qanater prison, named Ali Abdullah Abdul Ghafar Abdullah, 56 years old, from Alexandria Governorate. He passed away on Thursday, October 26, 2023. He had been detained since May 2021, suffered from diabetes, had his leg amputated inside the prison, and subsequently suffered from medical negligence.
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.
