Prisoners of conscience in Egyptian prisons continue to die as they are held in poor detention conditions with deliberate medical neglect.
On Sunday, September 26, it was announced that the detained engineer, Ahmed Ahmed Al-Nahas, died in Tora Investigation Prison, last Thursday, as a result of deliberate medical negligence.
Al-Nahas, 63, from Alsharqia Governorate, was arrested by the authorities last July. He was the treasurer of the Engineers Syndicate in Alexandria. He was previously arrested for a year during the era of the late President Al-Sadat, and 13 months during the era of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
With the death of “Al-Nahas”, the number of victims in Egyptian prisons since the beginning of this year has reached 37, most of whom died as a result of medical negligence which exacerbated by the poor detention conditions, thus raising the total number of victims since July 2013 to 904 victims.
Prisoners of conscience suffer from medical negligence in Egyptian detention facilities, which lack international standards for places of detention suitable for humans, according to a statement by Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK), which pointed to the overcrowding cells where detainees suffer from malnutrition, lack of hygiene and the spread of insects and pollution with lack of ventilation and lighting.
AOHR UK has repeatedly warned against the Egyptian authorities’ “indifference” to the lives of detainees for whom international laws and treaties impose the government’s responsibility for their medical treatment, especially in times of epidemics.
AOHR UK called on the international community, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the relevant international bodies, to put real pressure on the Egyptian regime to save the lives of tens of thousands of Egyptian detainees from the systematic slow killing, given the ongoing psychological and physical torture they are subjected to, and to work effectively to release all political detainees in Egypt.
Since Abdel Fattah El-Sisi assumed power in the country; The Egyptian authorities have been waging an unprecedented crackdown on dissidents and critics, arresting thousands in politically motivated arrests, many of whom have been convicted and sentenced in unfair trials, or held without trial for years on baseless terrorism-related charges, in very poor detention conditions.
