Prisoners of conscience in Egyptian prisons continue to be subject to slow killing due to the poor detention conditions and deliberate medical negligence, where many of them are placed in solitary confinement and subjected to other human rights violations.
The latest victim is the engineer Mohamed Mohamed Anwar, 70, from Ismailia governorate. He died in Gamasa supreme security prison.
Anwar was serving a 15-year prison sentence in case No. 2561 of 2013, known in the media as “The Courts Fire.”
With Anwar’s death, the number of victims in Egyptian prisons since the beginning of this year has reached 28, most of whom died as a result of medical negligence exacerbated by the poor detention conditions.
The total number of victims since July 2013 has reached 896 victims.
Prisoners of conscience suffer from medical neglect in Egyptian detention facilities that lack international standards detention suitable for human detention, according to a statement by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK, which pointed to large overcrowding in cells where detainees suffer from malnutrition, lack of hygiene, the spread of insects and pollution, and lack of ventilation and lighting.
AOHR UK has repeatedly warned against the Egyptian authorities’ negligence to the lives of detainees for whom international laws and treaties hold the government responsible for their treatment, especially in times of epidemics.
Since President 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, and dozens of the oppressed have been executed, or have been held without trial for years in very poor conditions of detention, on unfounded terrorism-related charges.
