Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) has declared that the death of a citizen within the confines of the Belbeis Police Station, in Sharqia Governorate, on Friday, 29 September, attributable to intentional medical neglect, underscores the Egyptian security apparatus’s blatant disregard for the general health of citizens and the squandering of detainees’ right to life.
It further establishes that medical negligence is a systematic practice within the security forces, originating from a policing mentality focused on exacting revenge upon and suppressing citizens, rather than rehabilitating them or holding them accountable within a holistic justice system.
AOHR UK noted that citizen Ibrahim Tarabqa, 41, detained on a criminal charge, developed a fever whilst in the police station. However, the police paid no heed to his health, despite his family’s successive pleas to the officer in charge of the Belbeis Police Station, Brigadier Amr Mandour, to transfer him to a hospital for treatment. When he was eventually moved to the hospital, despite recommendations for his detention there due to his urgent need for medical care, the police rejected the medical advice and returned him to the station. This action further deteriorated his health, exacerbated by hazardous detention conditions on all fronts, including rampant drug use and contraband within the detention facility and a detainee population exceeding the capacity of such venues.
In a related incident, one detainee slaughtered another on the previous Wednesday morning, just an hour after his detention, when the latter began screaming to be removed from the holding cell before succumbing to death due to the overcrowding, drug use, and fighting amongst the detainees. The former threatened to kill him if he did not quiet down, and when the screaming persisted, the former slaughtered him with a sharp instrument, killing him instantly.
On the same day, detainee Kamel Shadid Shaheen, aged 69, also passed away in the 10th of Ramadan Prison in Sharqia Governorate. This incident reaffirms that the Egyptian security apparatus adheres to a uniform approach towards both political and criminal detainees, neglecting the primary human rights of detainees.
AOHR UK has appealed to all human rights entities to scrutinise the conditions within Egyptian detention locales and prisons, which have evolved into dangerous environments for human life and instruments of death, rather than reformative, punitive tools within the justice system. The Egyptian prison system operates outside all humanitarian norms, affecting both criminals and opposing political figures and opinion detainees alike.
AOHR UK has expressed its condemnation of the global disregard for the human rights abuses transpiring in Egypt and the ongoing economic and political collaboration with the Egyptian regime at the highest echelons, without even acknowledging these abuses or adopting any feasible measures to exert pressure to halt such practices. AOHR UK perceives this international silence as a direct and intentional complicity in these crimes and violations.
AOHR UK has urged all those who believe in the justice of Egyptian human rights demands, from political parties and media across the globe, to employ all possible avenues to pressure their governments to reprimand the Egyptian regime, to alter its brutal methodology in dealing with detainees, and to hold those implicated in these crimes accountable.
