The New York Times published a report on the “slow death” of prisoners of conscience in Egyptian prisons and detention centres, who are held in “filthy cells, subjected to routine torture and denied lifesaving medications.”
The newspaper discussed the story of the detainee, Ahmed Abdelnabi, 61, who was tortured during interrogation, beaten and threatened with the rape of his wife. He was also denied medication for his diabetes, heart conditions, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure despite repeated requests.
The newspaper added that the detainee’s lawyer and family members confirmed that during the first 40 days of detention, Abdelnabi and his cellmate got no food, surviving on scraps of bread the prisoner next door passed through a hole.
Mr. Abdelnabi’s lawyer, Shorok Sallam, quoted him as saying “‘I’m dying a slow death,’” said. “‘I’m going to die. I might not make it to next time. I’m being tortured. I’m being denied medication. I’m being denied food.’
The New York Times noted that Abd al-Nabi, who was arrested in a yearslong campaign to extinguish opposition to the government, Mr. Abdelnabi was one of thousands of political prisoners held without trial for weeks, months or years for offenses as minor as liking an anti-government Facebook post.
The newspaper added that many detainees are locked for long stretches in cells that lack bedding, windows or toilets and are denied warm clothes in winter, fresh air in summer and medical treatment, no matter how sick they are.
“Torture is commonplace, they say. Visits are routinely prohibited. And some never leave…More than a thousand people have died in Egyptian custody since the authoritarian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in a 2013 military takeover, owing to treatment that rights groups say amounts to deadly negligence.”
The report stressed that the Egyptian justice system has helped Mr. el-Sisi cow dissent.
The newspaper pointed out that Egypt now holds some 60,000 political prisoners. That amounts to about half of the total jail population, which a government official put at about 120,000 in October.
It continued that some have been tried and sentenced. But Mr. el-Sisi’s government, which has stuffed the jails with critics chiefly through a system of pretrial detentions that imprisons people indefinitely without trial.
The report referred to an analysis by The New York Times, which found that at least 4,500 were detained without trial in one six-month period — many in abject, occasionally life-threatening, conditions.
