The Committee for Justice (CFJ) has documented two deaths inside detention facilities and prisons in Egypt. The first case involves a citizen named Mahmoud Asaad (26 years old), who died inside the Al-Khalifa police station in Cairo on Saturday, April 12, after being detained for only a few days. Obvious signs of torture were visible on his body, according to video recordings.
According to one of his relatives, Asaad was arrested from the street without any clear reason, and his family was prevented from visiting him under the pretext that he was “causing trouble inside the detention facility.” His death was then announced suddenly. His relative added, “The police station initially denied it, then claimed he died due to a fight; but the signs of torture are clear in the video.”
For their part, the victim’s family refused to receive the body without an autopsy, affirming that the visible marks indicate death by torture. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior claimed in a statement that the death resulted from a fight among inmates and that the deceased had been held on drug trafficking charges.
It is worth noting that this is not the first incident attributed to the Al-Khalifa police station, as allegations of torture and enforced disappearances have been repeated before, with threats made against detainees’ families to prevent them from reporting such incidents.
Similarly, the CFJ has documented the death of a political detainee named Yasser Mohamed El-Kheshab on Friday, April 11, at the Badr Prison Hospital while undergoing open-heart surgery. El-Kheshab, from Damietta Governorate, had been imprisoned for nearly 10 years.
It is worth mentioning that the Public Prosecution has opened an investigation into the death of the victim at the Al-Khalifa police station. Meanwhile, the CFJ expresses solidarity with the victim’s family in their demand for an independent and impartial investigation to uncover the circumstances of the death. The committee also calls on authorities to investigate the second death at Badr Prison Hospital, identify those responsible for these violations, and ensure they do not escape accountability.
With these cases, the number of deaths documented by the CFJ inside prisons and detention centers in Egypt since the beginning of 2025 has risen to 11. This follows the documentation of 50 deaths during the previous year, 2024.
Verified information about deaths during detention in Egypt can be obtained through the “Justice Monitoring Archive,” a service provided by the CFJ. It contains information on over 14,000 victims and more than 30,000 violations, monitoring abuses across over 500 detention sites in Egypt.
