Press release
By: Committee for Justice
Geneva: March 19, 2023
The Committee for Justice has documented the death of two political detainees inside detention centers in Egypt, due to poor detention condition and deliberate medical negligence by the Egyptian authorities.
The death of a detainee in Al-Abadia prison:
CFJ said that it documented the death of detainee Ramadan Youssef Ashry (50 years old), a lawyer from the Abu Homs center in the El Beheira governorate, west of the Delta, who has been detained pending a political case since 2014, in Al-Abadia prison in the El Beheira governorate.
CFJ reported that Ashry died of a sudden heart attack, which the prison administration was unable to deal with quickly and effectively, due to the poor conditions of the prison hospital.
The death of another detainee in Wadi al-Natrun prison:
The Committee for Justice also documented the death of detainee Mohamad Mustafa Sayed Ahmed (55 years old), from Cairo, inside his prison cell in Wadi el-Natrun prison, due to medical negligence by the prison hospital.
CFJ stated that Ahmed was suffering from kidney failure, and the administration of Wadi el-Natrun prison hospital refused to perform regular dialysis for him 3 times a week. This caused his health to deteriorate until he lost his life, as the prison administration prevented also the entry of medicines for him on a regular basis.
CFJ also pointed out that the detainee was denied treatment for a period of 32 days after his arrest on February 27, 2022, in an ambush by the security forces in front of the gate of the Shooting Club, Kattameya branch in Cairo, where he was forcibly disappeared throughout that period, before being brought before the State Security Prosecution on 31 March 2022, which decided to imprison him.
7 deaths in custody since the beginning of 2023:
With these two deaths, the number of deaths inside detention centers in Egypt, which the Committee for Justice documented, since the beginning of 2023, rises to 7 deaths, the last of which was of Ragai Wafai (40 years old), a psychiatrist, who died in Gamasa Police Station in Dakahlia Governorate due to medical neglect and poor prison conditions.
The Committee for Justice had previously documented four deaths of detainees inside detention centers in Egypt:
1- Detainee Mahmoud Abd al-Shafi al-Didamoni, a 42-year-old detainee inside the Zagazig police station in Egypt. He worked as a blacksmith in the village of Bani Amer in the Zagazig Center, and he was imprisoned pending case No. 2133 of 2021, the Zagazig Center in connection with charges of a political nature.
2-Detainee Sameh Tolba Saleh Al-Zeq (53 years old), died in the same police station, due to the deterioration of his health as a result of his two-month detention after the end of a two-year prison sentence against him.
3- Detainee, Saad Mahmoud Abdel-Ghani Khedr, who died in February in Borg Al-Arab prison west of Alexandria due to medical neglect and poor prison conditions. He was arrested on October 28, 2015, and was subjected to many violations in his prison, including preventing him from receiving regular treatment, which led to the deterioration of his health.
4- Detainee, Mohamed El-Sayed Morsi (52 years old), who was tortured to death at the National Security headquarters in Damietta.
The Committee for Justice has documented 1,170 deaths inside detention facilities and prisons in Egypt since 2013, through its Justice Watch Archive platform, which is the first and largest platform for monitoring violations in detention facilities in Egypt.
