On Thursday, December 30, 2021, the judge and former MP Hisham al-Qadi Hanafi died in the notorious Scorpion Prison, only 10 days after he was moved to.
The 61-year-old judge was arrested in 2014, where he spent 4 years in jail, before being re-arrested on March 8, 2021.
Hisham’s oldest brother, Abu Bakr Al-Qadi, also died in prison in 2014.
The Egyptian authorities continue to systematically practice medical negligence policy against prisoners of conscience, which has led to the death of 49 detainees during 2021, six of who died in December.
In addition to medical negligence, security forces frequently beat and subject detainees to torture and other ill-treatment without fearing the consequences.
The detainees are held in overcrowded cells infested with mosquitos, flies and other insects which, without fans or proper ventilation, reach temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius in the summer. Prison authorities also deny detainees adequate health care, do not allow them to receive food or drinks from their families outside the prison and have placed restrictions on clothes and medicine.
Since Abdel Fattah El-Sisi assumed power in the country in 2013, 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.
