The Giulio Regenis of Egypt Since 2013: a Report on Deaths in Custody in Egypt, January-October 2020

The Giulio Regenis of Egypt since 2013: A report on deaths in custody in Egypt, January-October 2020

Committee for Justice Geneva 10 December 2020

List of contributors

Data collection

Asmaa Mohamed Laila Hossam Salma Mahmoud Sarah Helmy Doaa Farouk Donia Mahmoud Ahmed Amin

Statistics preparation

Asmaa Mohamed Donia Mahmoud

Writing and Research

Sanaa Ahmed

Translation and editing

Marwa Murad

Review

Ahmed Mefreh

Design Karim el-Sayed

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Who are we? 7

First: Overall findings of deaths in detention facilities 2013-2020 9

Second: Detailed findings of deaths in detention facilities, January - October 2020 14 The political/legal framework for the incidents of deaths in detention facilities in 2020 14

Findings of monitoring and documenting deaths in detention facilities during (January- October 2020) 19

Significance of the numbers 27

Third: Victims at risk of death 33

Fourth: Documented narratives 42

Recommendations 51

Introduction

Regeni is not the only victim of the repression and brutality of Egyptian authorities. On September 6, 2013, nearly two months after the overthrow of Egypt's first elected civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, police detained a French citizen named Eric Lange, 49 years old, who had been working as a teacher for twenty years in Cairo, from the downtown area, on the pretext that he did not carry his personal identification papers and that he had violated the curfew, and on another pretext later, which is "drunkenness". The following day, a release order for Lange was issued, but the Qasr al- Nil police station authorities did not implement it - as usual - but instead he was beaten to death in custody.

The family's lawyer points out that the forensic report issued from the city of Nantes in western France proved that on September 13, 2013, Lange was beaten with an iron stick for six hours in a row, which led to his suffocation and death. Moreover, in a letter addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron on the eve of his official trip to Egypt in February 2019, the Lange family wrote that the wounds around his ankles, as evidenced by the report, indicated that Lange was hanged by his feet while receiving severe blows all over his body.

While the account of Egyptian authorities clarifies that the death was due to the beating of Lange by his companions in custody, this report states that authorities at the Qasr al-Nil Police Headquarters bear the greatest part of the responsibility, as it is not imaginable that Lange would be hanged from his feet except by them. It is also unimaginable that his torture would continue for six continuous hours, without their direct order or instigation at least.

The Committee for Justice (CFJ) team believes that this incident was a typical Tashrifa (Arabic for a humiliating reception for new detainees) for Lange, in which detention authorities inflict severe beatings and torture on the detainee upon his arrival at the detention facility. Detention authorities might have been afraid of doing so on the day of his detention - September 6 - anticipating pressure by the French government on the security agencies to release him. Since this did not happen, it is highly likely that they decided to torture him, taking advantage of the general climate of hostility towards foreigners at the time -many of them were considered "spies", and incited a number of criminal detainees held with him to beat him to death while holding them criminally responsible for his killing. It is customary for detention authorities in Egypt to place criminal detainees with political and civilian detainees in the same cells for purposes of surveillance and abuse.

Lange died soon after the incident. Of course, the detention authorities did not provide him with the necessary health care, but they merely transferred him to a nearby detention room, letting him die slowly. The recorded date of his death was September 13, 2013, after six days of arbitrary detention in violation of the release order.

The Lange family submitted a request to the investigating judge at the Nantes Court to form an international investigation committee to effectively investigate the location of the incident, and investigate those responsible for Lange’s arrest as well as the authorities in charge of the detention facility.

Also, the family submitted an official complaint to the Minister of Interior against two police officers over "kidnapping" and "failing to rescue” Lange. The complaint, however, did not lead to any results despite the intervention of then French President Francois Holland. In 2016, the Criminal Court issued a seven-year prison sentence against six defendants - Lange’s detention companions- on charges of "beating to death". But police officials who committed, ordered and incited this crime have yet to be held accountable.

A month after the killing of Lange, on October 13, 2013, detention authorities in the First Ismailia Police Station announced the killing of 55-year-old American citizen James Henry Lawn, after his alleged suicide in the waiting room bathroom inside the building. The authorities had arrested James on August 29, 2013, after stopping him on the road between the cities of Al-Arish and Rafah, on the pretext of violating curfew.

James was held in pretrial detention for six weeks, during which - on October 8 - he received a visit from US embassy officials in Cairo. He allegedly committed suicide on October 13, 2013, one day after he was informed of the decision to extend his pretrial detention for another thirty days.

The case of the alleged suicide indicates the responsibility of the detention authorities in the First Ismailia Police Station for the death of the victim by neglecting to diagnose his psychological state, ignoring the presence of suicide tools - a leather belt and shoe tie - in his possession, and causing his deep frustration by informing him of the decision to extend his pretrial detention soon (two or three days) after the visit of US embassy officials to him, without preparing him psychologically to receive this decision. The negative impact of the incident of the killing of Lange in his prison due to torture and beatings cannot be neglected. James was hoping for his release quickly after the visit of the officials, then he was afraid of being killed by torture after he was informed of the extension of his pretrial detention, and the detention authorities did not notice this shift in his psychological conditions.

Thus, the criminal responsibility of the detention authorities for the death of James proves the following:

First, the nature of the special relationship between the detainee and the detaining authorities:

The tragedy of suicide is not merely about the detainee, but it also indicates the failure of the detention authorities - responsible for his legal, human, health and psychological conditions - to protect him from harming himself, thus obstructing the course of justice on the one hand, and violating the objectives of the system of correction and punishment on the other, especially since James was not proven guilty of any charges when he committed suicide. So he had lost hope in the justice system’s adherence to human rights, his country’s committment to release him, and the judicial authorities’ ability to protect him from torture and abuse.

Second, in the case of James, the presence of the context and previous facts that represent a direct threat to his personal security:

That could be exemplified in the precedence of the complicity of detention officials and detention companions - a month before James allegedly committed suicide - in killing Lange by beating and torture, and then their escape from accountability. This is not the first time when a foreign detainee/prisoner dies due to the detention authorities' negligence in carrying out their legally binding duties and roles - according to the Egyptian constitution and international treaties. Depriving detainees and prisoners of their human rights, and targeting them with violence based on discrimination - be it political, ideological, or ethnic - has led to the death of a Sudanese prisoner called Mansour in February 2018. According to the official version of his death, Mansour died of a circulatory collapse after his arrest in connection with a case of theft and confrontation of authorities in the Al-Basateen Police Station area. It is no secret that the general discrimination in Egypt against Sudanese individuals was the main reason for the death of Mansour, who did not receive health care of any kind, and the media did not shed enough light on his condition, perhaps for the same reasons.

In January 2020, Mustafa Qasim Abdullah, a 53-year-old American-Egyptian citizen died in the hospital of Liman Torah (maximum security prison), where he spent a whole year suffering from gross medical negligence. Authorities had arrested Mustafa on August 14, 2013, during the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in. They had not hesitated to abuse him for six consecutive years, despite his suffering from thyroid disorders and diabetes. The American embassy in Cairo

tried to intervene to release him to no avail. Mustafa had also attempted in vain to go on hunger strike to improve his miserable conditions of detention, including torture, overcrowding, ill- treatment and preventing the entry of medicine, food, clothes, blankets and water to him. This has all been compounded by the negligence of authorities to aid him when he fell into a diabetes coma until he fell unconscious for five consecutive months, after which he woke up in the intensive care room at the prison’s hospital, then lost his life on January 13, 2020.

There is an obvious common thread between all of these cases, namely racial discrimination that the security and detention authorities pursue throughout the Arab Republic of Egypt and in the various detention facilities. The discrimination is based on political, intellectual or ethnic affiliation. It targets foreigners and Egyptians alike. These cases, along with more than a thousand deaths in detention facilities since 2013 point to the oppression of the security agencies in Egypt towards those they perceive as critics or opponents of the existing political system, under any condition or circumstance. That leads to the question: how many Giulio Regenis have been killed by Egyptian authorities without fear of accountability?

Who are we?

About the Committee for Justice (CFJ)

CFJ1 has a primary mission to contribute to the protection and defense of victims of human rights violations, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. In order to achieve this goal, the organization collects important data and provides a highly credible picture of the human rights situation in the region. Its method is to observe, monitor, and document violations, and follow the development of policies and practices, especially in countries that suffer from a lack of information and harassment of human rights workers.

1 To view the monitoring methodology, documentation and use of legal terminology in our reports, please visit our website via the link: https://www.cfjustice.org/

Monitoring detention centers

One of the most important projects of CFJ is Detention Watch, which is concerned with the ongoing violations of human rights in official and unofficial detention centers. The project monitors and verifies data and violations on a daily basis, and issues a number of periodic reports that analyze the collected data, with the aim of raising awareness, at the local and international level, of the harsh conditions faced by detainees, and contributing to the creation of a more just political system and a more humane penal system in Egypt.

Prisons and detention centers

The report deals with monitoring and documenting violations occurring inside official and unofficial detention centers, considering the difference between them:

Official detention centers:

Article No. 1 on prisons, in Law No. 396 of 1956, defines four types of prisons: reformatories, general prisons, central prisons, and prisons of a special nature.

In addition to prisons, 2the Ministry of Interior has identified other detention centers in decision No. 5 of 1969, which are connected to police points, centers and departments, and criminal investigation departments, where prisoners and detainees remain in custody.3

Unofficial detention centers

The unofficial detention centers include all detention centers not mentioned in the provisions of the law or the provisions of the ministerial decree. Detainees are usually subject to enforced disappearance in these detention centres, which include central security camps, headquarters of the state security apparatus, and military prisons- all are illegal secret detention centers.

Unofficial detention centers Official detention centers Central Security Forces camps Reformatories Public Prisons

National Security Headquarters Central Prisons

2 In all reports, the Tora Prisons Area" refers to: Tora Prison High Security 1, Tora High Security Prison 2, Mazraa Annex Prison, Tora Reception Prison, Tora Investigation Prison, Tora Prison Building, and the Tora Convicted Building. 3 By “inside places of detention,” the report refers to every violation detected against a person or group of persons while they are in detention and subject to supervision or follow-up by a government employee.

Prisons of a special nature Military prisons Police stations Criminal investigation departments

Table 1: Types of detention facilities targeted in the Committee for Justice reports

First: Overall findings of deaths in detention facilities 2013-2020

During the period from June 2013 to October 2020, the number of deaths that the CFJ was able to detect inside detention facilities reached 1,058 deaths, distributed over eight years, with 8 percent in 2013, 17.2 percent in 2014, 20.5 percent in 2016, 12 percent in 2016, 13.7 percent in 2017, 10.2 percent in 2018, 8 percent in 2019, and finally, 9 percent in 2020.

The above statistics, also shown in the figure below, indicate that the number of deaths in detention centers increased to 100 cases in 2020 compared to their relative decline in 2019 (90 cases).

217 183 129 146 85 108 90 100

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Figure 1: The distribution of deaths in detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) by years

An analysis of the causes of death over those years shows that the primary category is the deaths from denial of health care since the military’s takeover of political rule in 2013, while the number of deaths due to torture varies between 2013, 2014, and 2015 by 49, 15, and then 32 deaths respectively, then there has been a gradual decline to eight deaths in 2020.

The year 2013 was the worst by all standards. Within only six months (June - December 2013), there were 85 deaths at the hands of the detention authorities, 57 percent of them (49/85) were due to brutal torture, and 36 percent (31/85) was due to denial of health care.

The pattern of violations leading to the death or killing of detainees and prisoners continued to increase over the course of 2014 and 2015, with a marked increase in poor conditions of detention leading to death by 310 percent (31 incidents in 2015 compared to 10 incidents in 2014), violations of torture leading to death by 213 percent (32 incidents in 2015 compared to 15 in 2014) and a slight change in the category of denial of health care (which remains the highest compared to all causes of death).

Also, the years 2016 to 2018 witnessed a marked fluctuation in the number of deaths caused by denial of health care- with the number of deaths increasing by 12 percent (115 deaths in 2017 compared to 101 deaths in 2016), then decreasing by 36.9 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from 115 to 84 deaths), then the total number of deaths due to this cause converges at both ends of that period (i.e. 2016 and 2018), as shown in the figure below. Distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) by year and cause of death

Poor detention conditions Denial of health care Torture Suicide Other

143 132 101 115 84 84 49 71 1 31 2 2 10 15 7 8 31 3213 9 3 12 8 5 51114 1 5 9 10 811 2 8 2 4

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Figure 2: Distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) by year and cause of death

The same pattern was repeated in the cases of suicide deaths in those years, with an increase of 175 percent (14 incidents in 2017 compared to 8 in 2016), and then a decrease of only 29 percent in the following year (10 incidents in 2018 compared to 14 in 2016). 2017). Finally, in this group of years, the incidence of deaths by torture decreased gradually by 25 percent (9 incidents in 2018 compared to 12 in 2016).

By analyzing the deaths data for the past two years (2019-2020), it is clear that deaths due to torture (8 deaths in both) remain unchanged, while the number of deaths due to denial of health care increased by 15.4 percent (from 71 deaths in 2019 to 84 deaths in 2020), and a significant decrease by about 82 percent in the number of deaths due to suicide (from 11 to only 2 in 2020).

In general, the percentage of deaths due to denial of health care reached 71.9 percent (761\1058) of the total deaths in detention facilities during the reporting period, followed by torture deaths that reached 13.6 percent (144/1058), then deaths due to poor detention conditions at a rate of 2.7 percent (29/1058), as follows:

Distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013 - October 2020) according to the cause of death

761 144 67 57 29

Denial of health care Torture Suicide Poor detention conditions Other

Figure 3: The distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013 - October 2020) according to the cause of death

In addition to the above, an analysis of the change in the causes of death over the past years shows the noticeable increase in the incidence of death by suicide in detention facilities during the years 2015 and 2017 (13 and 14 incidents, respectively), which represents six times the deaths due to this cause at both ends of the reporting period (only two deaths in both 2013 and 2020). With regards to deaths due to poor conditions of detention, 2015 is the worst year during the reporting period, with 31 deaths compared to five deaths in 2019 and 2020, as shown below.

Distribution of the monitored deaths in detention facilities (June 2013 - October 2020) by year and cause of death

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Total

761

144

143

132

115

101

1 1

Poor detention Denial of health care Torture Suicide Other conditions

Figure 4: The distribution of the monitored deaths in detention facilities (June 2013 - October 2020) by year and cause of death

In general, it should be noted that the number of deaths was highest in the governorates of Cairo, Minya and Giza, with 236, 104, and 100 deaths, respectively, the three of which represented 41.5 percent (440/1058) of the total deaths in detention facilities during the reporting period.

Distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) by governorate

1058

236

104100 88 71 64 45 50 40 26 24 27 23 19 18 21 18 16 14 14 11 8 6 5 5 4 1

Cairo

Minya

Giza

Qalyubia

Sharqia

Alexand…

Thenew…

Monufia

Dakahlia

Beni SuefBeni

Damietta

Gharbia

Kafr Kafr El…

Qena

Aswan

El El Beheira

Fayoum

Asyut

Ismailia

Sohag

Suez

Luxor

Port Port Said

TheRed…

North…

Unknown

Matrouh Total

Figure 5: The distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) by governorate

That is due to the proliferation of public prison areas and the high number of police stations in those governorates. Cairo governorate includes the Tora prison area, about 38 police stations and a large number of unofficial detention facilities (such as the security forces camp in Al-Salam City, the Logistics Authority, and the Administrative Control Authority prison) in which cases of deaths have occurred during the reporting period. Also, the Minya governorate has the new Minya prison complex (public - high security - new) in addition to about 10 police stations and departments where deaths occurred. The governorate of Giza includes about 21 police departments/stations, in addition to a number of unofficial facilities where the deaths occurred (such as the headquarters of the security forces at the 10.5 kilometers area on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, and the security forces camp in Giza).

This was reflected in the distribution of deaths inside the detention facilities. For example, the Tora Prisons Complex tops the most prominent detention facilities with 68 deaths during the reporting period, followed by the Minya Prisons Complex and the (Al-Awadi Al-Jadid) New Valley Prison with 67 and 45 deaths, respectively. The three are at the top of the list of more than 300 official and unofficial places of detention in which we have monitored the occurrence of deaths since 2013. The figure below shows the most prominent of these facilities as follows:

Distribution of the monitored deaths (June 2013 - October 2020) by names of the most prominent places of detention 68 67 45 39 36 29 26 21 19

12 12 10 10

Tora Tora Prisons Complex

Minya PrisonsComplex Minya

New Valley Prison Valley New

Abu Zaabal- PrisonAbu

Wadi El-NatrunPrisonsWadi

Al Matariyyah Al Police

Burj Al Arab Al prison BurjArab

Imbaba Police Imbaba

Ain Shams Shams AinPolice

Boulaq Ad Boulaq Dakrour

Dar Al Salam Al Police Dar Salam

El El Talbia StationPolice

Helwan Police Helwan Station

Department

Police StationPolice

Department

Station

Khankah

Station Complex

Figure 6: Distribution of the monitored deaths (June 2013 - October 2020) by names of the most prominent places of detention

In the Qasr al-Nil police station and after the death of the French teacher Eric Lange after being brutally tortured inside the station, two other deaths occurred on July 12, 2014 and January 15, 2015, for two criminal detainees, due to being denied health care, and the criminal responsibility - once again - lied with the sheriff of the police station who was not held accountable first for the crime of torture leading to death, and later for depriving the deceased from health care until they died in the same place.

Also, in the First Ismailia Police Station, after the suicide of Henry James Lawn, CFJ observed the suicide of Al-Sayed Helmy Habashi by hanging on April 18, 2015, and a few months later the death of a veterinarian named Afifi Hosni Afifi Mohamed on November 27, 2015 due to torture leading to death. In the same governorate - specifically, the Second Ismailia Police Station - we observed the death of a detainee named Shukri Sayed Suleiman on November 7, 2013, and others - including a woman - in October and November 2016 due to being denied health care. Also, in the Al-Basateen Police Station, where the Sudanese detainee Mansour died in February 2018, five detainees had died during the years 2014 and 2015, one of them due to torture, and two of them due to being denied health care despite suffering shortness of breath and a decrease in blood circulation, and another one who lost his life inside the station after a gunshot wound to the chest, and finally, in the Tora prison area, in which Mustafa Qasim died at the beginning of this year due to negligence and denial of health care, 14 prisoners and detainees died in 2020 due to being denied health care, two died due to poor detention conditions and four others died for various reasons (including direct killing). Over the previous years of the reporting period, 44 prisoners/detainees

have died due to lack of health care, three due to torture, and another due to suicide in the same detention facility.

In general, by analyzing the facts of death according to the types of detention facilities, the CFJ notes that the number of deaths in police stations and headquarters is the highest by 55 percent (584/1058), followed by central and general prisons by 33.9 percent (359/1058), with an increase in the number of deaths among detainees and prisoners inside deportation vehicles, Central Security Forces camps and court headquarters, with 43, 20, and 16 deaths, respectively, as follows:

Distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-

October 2020) according to the type of 1058 584 359

2 1 1 3 6 43 1 10 2 8 20 2 16

National Accidental

Administra

CareHome

Prison

Military

transport…

station /…station

Prosecutio

Unknown

Directorate

Hospital

Security…

headquar…

Total

Security…

n n building

detention…

Prisoner

Central

prison

Military

Police Security

… Court tive…

Figure 7: The distribution of the monitored deaths inside detention facilities (June 2013-October 2020) according to the type of detention facility

Second: Detailed findings of deaths in detention facilities, January - October 2020

The political/legal framework for the incidents of deaths in detention facilities in 2020

The incidents of death in detention facilities in 2020 are an important indicator of the increase in the number of deaths again after their relative decline in 2019 compared to previous years, which is an increase that should be understood in the context of the political and legal transformations that have occurred and are ongoing during the current year.

At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has shaped the policies of various countries of the world - especially in the field of health, crisis and emergency management - towards reducing the number of infections and deaths, the positions and policies of the ministries of health and interior in Egypt come at opposite ends - on the official level - at least. The policies of the Egyptian government is a major cause of the increase in the number of infections and deaths of Covid-19 in detention facilities (the total figures reached 220 suspected cases, 111 confirmed cases, and 17 deaths) due to its abuse of the state of emergency - in policy, behavior and practice - to oppress citizens, while the Ministry of Health fails and the health facilities inside the detention facilities are unable to treat them.4

This is evidenced by a number of important indicators, including:

1. The number of arrivals to detention facilities - particularly police stations - during the curfew period that was applied on March 24, when the Ministry of Interior authorities detained more than three hundred thousand citizens in police stations for long hours, then referred their files to the Emergency Supreme State Security Court, according to Prime Minister Decision No. 941 of 20205 - instead of resorting to alternative punishments- such as fines and preventing their entry and exit from police headquarters.6

2. Index of the release of detainees and prisoners who do not pose a major threat to society or those most vulnerable to the virus and death by it, such as the elderly and people with chronic diseases.

While governments of many countries released tens of thousands of detainees and prisoners, Egyptian authorities only made a decision to pardon 14,822 criminal prisoners between March 26 and October 6, 2020, of whom 955 were conditionally released, according to CFJ’s tally, in a clear disregard for the rights of tens of thousands of those arbitrarily detained on the background of accusations of a political nature. This was also followed by reports of the authorities' release of only 400 detainees from the September 2020 demonstrations (out of 2,000 detainees - approximately - arbitrarily thrown into detention centers on the basis of these events), numbers that - according to CFJ- are limited in principle to 176 detainees who received a decision to release them, of whom CFJ only documented 50 detainees who have already been released, out of 2,048 detainees in connection with these events.7

4 Review our quarterly report entitled for the period July-September 2020 as part of the project to monitor human rights violations in detention facilities, in this link: https://bit.ly/37iP1KB 5 See the decision published in the Official Gazette No. 18 bis A on May 6, 2020. 6 Review CFJ report, for the period of March-April as part of the work of the project to monitor human rights violations in detention facilities, in this link: https://bit.ly/3o48cPd 7 These statistics include the number of people who were arbitrarily arrested in connection with the events of the September / October 2020 demonstrations and the incidents that coincided with them outside the scope of this report.

It is no secret that these numbers are small compared to the numbers of those released in many other countries - such as the United States of America - in addition to the inconsistency of these numbers with the numbers of detainees and prisoners in the Egyptian detention facilities, which suffer from overcrowding at more than 160 percent of their capacity, according to the report of the the National Council for Human Rights in 2016. CFJ expects that percentage to increase significantly in the year 2020, against the backdrop of successive security attacks, and it seems that this is what prompted 55 Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress on October 19 to issue a letter calling on the Egyptian government to release the detainees held arbitrarily. This was followed by another letter by 220 European lawmakers to demand the release of political detainees. But it does not seem that Egyptian authorities have decided to respond to these pressures.

3. Finally, there is an indicator that the CFJ monitored during the past year, based on statements from the victims' families and dozens of documented narratives. The Ministry of Interior - represented by the detention authorities - ignored the minimum precautionary measures aimed at reducing the number of infections and deaths of Covid-19 in detention headquarters, except for the decision to prevent family and lawyers’ visits and prevent detainees from attending sessions to renew the decision of pretrial detention, in an apparent intention to exploit the pandemic crisis to abuse the defendants and their families and continue to undermine their human rights. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior did not care to increase health facilities inside places of detention, or allocate a sufficient number of rooms to isolate confirmed and suspected cases - by reducing overcrowding in general. It also did not work to summon specialized doctors to detention centers, and did not bother to track cases who came in contact with those infected to ensure that they were free of symptoms (contact tracing), and did not provide hygiene and sterilization materials, especially masks, soap and water to ensure the cleanliness of detention facilities, and in some cases even preventing detainees and prisoners from reaching them. Additionally, authorities have not isolated the most vulnerable groups to protect them from infection, among other serious policy failures - which amount to a deliberate denial of protection and health care, which led to a higher number of deaths during the year 2020 than the previous year.

On the legal level, in conjunction with the above developments, Law No. 22 of 2020 amending some provisions of Law No. 162 of 1958 regarding the state of emergency8 was issued in 2020, which included a statement of a number of precautionary measures related to health emergencies and natural disasters on the one hand, but it also included many articles that have nothing to do with the conditions imposed by the pandemic. In fact, they represent a direct abuse by the authorities of the crisis to restrict the rights of citizens and carry out more repression against them.

8 Law No. 22 of 2020 amending some provisions of Law No. 162 of 1958 regarding the state of emergency, published in the Official Gazette No. 18 bis A on May 6, 2020.

As per the amendment, the jurisdiction of the Emergency Supreme State Security Courts was expanded, as well as the powers of the President of the Republic in taking the measures stipulated in the third article of Law 162/1958, which represents a clear violation of many constitutional principles and a significant increase in the discretionary powers of the President of the Republic.

The crimes referred to the emergency courts were also added to those related to construction violations and encroachment on agricultural lands, which led to the referral of thousands of cases accumulated since 2011 to emergency courts, which are now trying citizens without any guarantees of fair trial rules.

Against the background of these developments, more abuses affected a greater number of citizens belonging to broad social, class and political groups, which led to widespread anger and discontent among citizens. During 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in 12 percent of citizens falling into extreme poverty, and 44.4 of them (12.9 million workers) below the poverty line,9 while the results of a survey conducted by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) indicated that the pandemic has reduced incomes by 73.5 percent of the citizens, while about 50 percent of Egyptians resort - under the current circumstances - to dependence on borrowing, subsidies and the aid of philanthropists, as the incomes of the vast majority is no longer sufficient for basic needs. 10

In these circumstances in which the government should have increased financial and in-kind subsidies for the most affected groups of the public and helped them to overcome the disaster, the implementation of the directions of the President of the Republic Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to remove unlicensed houses and buildings, leading to the removal of more than 36 thousand buildings violating the law during the period from the end of March to the beginning of July, which led to an increase in popular momentum against the removal of buildings - mostly residential/informal housing for the vast majority of poor immigrants to the outskirts of major cities and their relatively affluent neighborhoods - with the intention of working and earning a living.11 Thus the most vulnerable and fragile social groups are now faced with poverty and hunger, combined with unemployment, a pandemic and homelessness.

With the outbreak of online protests, publishing photos of thousands of displaced families from their homes and news of the arrest of many who opposed or expressed opposition to the

9 The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies http://www.eces.org.eg/cms/NewsUploads/Pdf/2020_4_6- 6_37_306-4-2020-last%20by%20Ebrahim-1.pdf 10 See the press release of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, dated 20 June 2020, https://bit.ly/3fYrz9L 11 Informal housing provides shelter to more than 45 million citizens in Egypt, and its percentage exceeds 60 percent of all residential buildings in several governorates such as Sohag, Alexandria and Cairo. Alexandria governorate occupies the first place in terms of the spread of "slums" - meaning the illegal buildings - followed by Cairo, then Sohag, according to the latest reports issued by the Central Agency for Mobilization and Statistics (2018).

government and its security authorities demolishing homes without providing an alternative to housing its poor residents,12 President Sisi's speech came on August 29 to add more fuel to the fire, and instead of reducing pressures on citizens, his speech threatened them to send army forces to each town and village to demolish the unlicensed buildings. His speech also equated the residents in those buildings to those committing terrorist crimes, in what constitutes a major expansion in the definition of the policy of combating terrorism, neglecting the truth of what the authority is doing towards citizens, and accumulating more cases before the notorious Emergency Supreme State Security Courts, which are known to violate the most basic principles of justice. So the citizens have found themselves contesting an unjust authority with a more unjust judiciary that is aiding repression.

That was not the end of the story. Rather, security authorities continued their attacks and campaigns against citizens in their homes on the anniversary of the demonstrations of September 20, 2019, to remind citizens of the incident of arresting more than 4000 demonstrators and civil society workers within a few weeks. That was against the backdrop of the call for demonstrations triggered by video testimonies of the whistleblower and former contractor Muhammad Ali, who revealed the extent of financial and political corruption and the seizure of the country's wealth by a few military leaders for their own personal and factional interests. The number of arbitrarily detained persons doubled during that period of the year (September / October 2020), bringing the total number of detainees in connection with these events to 2,048 detainees, according to the preliminary statistics of the CFJ’s monitoring team.

Faced with all this, and in conjunction with it, Egyptian authorities did not leave room for civil society to play its roles in assisting, supporting and defending the rights of the oppressed before the judicial bodies. On the contrary, the successive attacks on civil society institutions developed as follows:

1. The selective phase in early 2014 - by targeting 1,055 charitable institutions that were providing social care to the poor and needy and freezing their funds against the background of accusing them of standing up for members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood who are victims of repression. 2. Legislative and administrative restrictions on civil society activities, by amending the text of Articles 76 and 86 of the Egyptian Penal Code and by issuing the notorious "terrorism"

12The current government headed by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced a "zero tolerance" plan regarding violating buildings and its goal to eliminate encroachments by building on more than 7.8 billion square meters of state-owned land, according to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's campaign to reclaim state lands in 2017, a campaign that did not draw any directions or plans to re-house the overwhelming majority of citizens living in these buildings in light of the state’s abandonment of providing the least of their economic and social rights by providing low-cost housing and social safety nets against unemployment, poverty and disease.

and NGOs laws, which are amendments that aimed to place civil society under the sword of the executive authority. 3. Accusing civil society organizations - all of them - of terrorism, including the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Egyptian Coordination of Rights and Freedoms, and many human rights advocates inside and outside the country. That was the stage that prevailed in 2020, in which the Criminal Court - the Terrorism Circuit - issued a ruling at the end of August to imprison in absentia for a period of fifteen years the well-known human rights defender, Bahey El Din Hassan, Director of the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies, after his criticism (via his page on social media) of the performance of the Public Prosecution office and his solidarity with the Egyptian writer Alaa Al-Aswany following the violation of the latter’s rights at Cairo International Airport in 2018, as well as the blatant beating and insulting of the mother and sister of the human rights defender Alaa Abdel-Fattah, then the kidnapping of his sister, Sanaa Seif - in August as well - before the Public Prosecutor's office as soon as she submited a report of the abuse of herself and her mother, and finally her trial on charges that are no less empty than accusing a human rights icon such as Mr Hassan of insulting the judiciary or spreading false news, as well as the arrest of human rights defenders Gasser Abdel Razek, Muhammad Al-Baqer, Mahienour Al-Masry and others whose activities were a guarantee of justice - or at least the reduction of injustice - for thousands of victims in Egyptian judicial and penal institutions in Egypt.

In light of the above, the numbers of deaths in the year 2020 must be considered not only in terms of numerical significance, but also in terms of the political, societal and legal conditions that have emerged and the aspects of which we tried to clarify, as well as in terms of the possibilities that they refer to regarding the situation inside Egypt. Date presented in this report should also be evaluated in terms of the consequences expected in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, the following paragraphs review the most prominent findings that the CFJ has reached through the work of its monitoring and documentation teams regarding deaths in detention facilities during 2020.

Findings of monitoring and documenting deaths in detention facilities during (January-October 2020)

During 2020, the CFJ monitored 100 deaths in detention facilities, with the highest deaths in June (15 cases), September (14 cases) and the months of May and July (12 deaths each), representing 53 percent of the total deaths during the reporting period. , As follows:

Total Other Death as a result of poor conditions in the place of detention Death as a result of torture Death as a result of denial of health care Suicide

11 5 11 5 12 15 12 9 14 6

1 11 1 3 2 11 15 11 2 4 6 4 8 7 1 3 8 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 January March May July September

Figure 8: The distribution of the monitored deaths during (January-October 2020) according to the months and cause of death

In conjunction with this, we documented 10 deaths inside detention facilities, all of them due to the denial of health care, distributed according to the months as follows:

10 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 January February April June July August September Total

Figure 9: The documented deaths (January-September 2020) by month and cause of death

According to the geographical distribution, the number of detected deaths in Cairo only reached 46 percent (46/100) of the total monitored cases, and the Sharqeya governorate came next with 16 percent (16/100), then Menoufia, Alexandria and Giza with 10, 7, and 7 deaths respectively inside detention facilities, as follows:

Distribution of deaths (January-October 2020) according to governorates and cause

Suicide of death Death as a result of denial of health care Death as a result of torture Death as a result of poor conditions in the place of detention 20 16 Other 9 5 5 5 224 1 2 2 1 14 4 4 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

Figure 10: Distribution of deaths (January-October 2020) by governorates and cause of death

In terms of documented deaths, Cairo and Sharkia topped the rest of the governorates with 3 and 4 documented deaths, respectively, representing 70 percent (7/10) of the total deaths documented during the reporting period.

4 3 1 1 1 Sharqia Gharbia Monufia Minya Cairo Total

Figure 11: Distribution of documented deaths (January-September 2020) by governorates

In terms of the types of detention facilities in which we monitored and documented the occurrence of deaths, central and public prisons led them with 52 percent (52/100) of deaths, followed by police headquarters and stations by 41 percent (41/100), as follows:

Distribution of deaths (January - October 2020) according to the types of detention facilities

Accidental detention facility 1 1

Military site 1 1 National Security 1 1 2 Headquarters Central Security Forces camp 3 3

Police station / headquarters 2 33 6 41 Central Prison / Public Prison 45 12 4 52

/ Liman (Maximum-security)…

Suicide Death as a result of denial of Death as a result of torture Death as a result of poor Other Total health care conditions in the place of detention

Figure 12: The distribution of deaths (January-October 2020) according to the types of detention facilities

The documented deaths were also divided according to the type of detention facility, between 6 cases in central and public prisons and 4 in police stations.

Concerning the most prominent detention facilities in which we monitored the occurrence of deaths, the Tora prisons area and its annexes (Scorpion 1,2) were at the top of 55 facilities, with 21 deaths, followed by the Minya Prisons area, the Burj al-Arab Prisons area, and the Wadi al- Natroun Prisons area, 6, 4, and 4 deaths, respectively, as follows:

Distribution of the monitored deaths (January - October 2020) according to the main places of detention

First 10th of Ramadan Police Station 2 Dekhela Police Station 2 Qalyub El Balad Police Station 2 Kafr Saqr Police Station 2 Al-Ahram Police Station 2 Belbeis Police Headquarters 2 Al-Wadi Al-Jadid Public Prison - Al-Wahat Prison 2 Unknown 2 First El Mahalla Al-Kubra Police Station 3 Shebin Al-Kom Public Prison 3 Zagazig Public Prison 3 Wadi al-Natrun Prisons Area - Sadat 4 Burj Al Arab Prisons Area - Agharbanaat 4 Minya Prisons Area (Public - Maximum Security - New) 6 Tora Prisons Area and its Annexes, Scorpion 1 & 2 21

Figure 13: Distribution of the monitored deaths (January-October 2020) according to the main places of detention

Concerning documentation, the incidents of death were divided between the following facilities, with repeated deaths in the Tora Maximum Security Prison, as follows:

2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Figure 14 Distribution of the documented deaths (January-September 2020) by name of the place of detention

According to the type of accusations and cases that the deceased were listed on, the number of deaths among prisoners and detainees in relation to cases of a political nature increased to 68 deaths, which is more than double the deaths among those listed in cases of a criminal nature (32 deaths). The distribution of deaths due to denial of health care was 55 deaths in the first section

(political) compared to 29 deaths for the same cause in the second section (criminal), as shown by the following analysis:

7 4 2 1 2 Suicide Death as a result of Death as a result of Death as a result of Other denial of health care torture poor conditions in the place of detention

Figure 15 The distribution of the monitored deaths (January-October 2020) according to the type of victims and the cause of death

An analysis of the data according to the age groups of the victims and the causes of death inside their places of detention shows that 52 percent of the deaths (52/100) occurred due to the denial of health care for victims whose ages ranged from the elderly (15 deaths) to the middle-aged (47 deaths). The percentage between deaths in those two categories - and for this reason - points to the detention authorities' failure to care for the health of the elderly, as well as their abuse of middle- aged people in particular and deliberately depriving them of health care - despite the responsibilities of authorities under local and international law, which further contributed to their death at this rate.

Distribution of the monitored deaths (January-October 2020) according to the age of the victims and the cause of death

Suicide Death as a result of denial of health care Death as a result of torture

100 84 47 51 26 15 15 19 1 3 3 1 8 3 4 1 2 1 2 8 2 4

(18-35)Youth (60 +)Elderly Unknown (35-60)Middle-Aged Total

Figure 16 The distribution of the monitored deaths (January-October 2020) according to the age of the victims and the cause of death

Also, CFJ has been able to identify the professions and jobs of the deceased by examining the data of 44 deaths in detention facilities. The following figure shows the high mortality rate among lawyers (4), teachers / education workers (9) and craftsmen (5): Distribution of deaths (January-October 2020) according to the victims' occupations Union / Party / Doctor, 2, 6% Political Activist, Faculty Member, 1, 3% 2, 6% Engineer, 3, 9% Teacher, 9, 26%

Employee, 3, 9% Artisan, 5, 14% Lawyer, 4, 12% Other, 5, 15%

Figure 17 The distribution of deaths (January-October 2020) according to the occupations of the victims

Likewise, according to an analysis of the judicial bodies that were examining the cases of the deceased inside the detention facilities during the current year, it becomes clear that the Public Prosecution office is responsible for 41 percent of the deaths (41/100), in addition to the Criminal Court (13 percent - 13/100), and the Emergency Supreme State Security Prosecution (10 percent - 10/100), as the following figure illustrates: Distribution of death cases (January- October 2020) according to the judicial authorities that consider the victims' claims

Suicide Death as a result of denial of health care Death as a result of torture Death as a result of poor conditions in the place of detention Other 84 35 18 2 4 213 9 13 2 1 3 4 2 1 2 8 2 4

Figure 18 Distribution of death cases (January-October 2020) according to the judicial authorities that consider the victims' claims

According to the legal position of the deceased during the reporting period, it is evident from the following analysis that 61 percent of deaths (61/100) occurred among pretrial detainees, and only 24 percent (24/100) were among those serving legal penalties against them, as follows:

Distribution of deaths (January - October 2020) according to the legal position of the victims Enforced Arrest disappearance 2% Under trial 3% 1% Unknown 9%

Pre-trial detention 61% Serving a sentence 24%

Figure 19 Distribution of deaths (January - October 2020) according to the legal position of the victims

The documented deaths were distributed according to the legal position of the victims, between nine deaths among pretrial detainees and one case among those serving sentences inside the detention facilities.

Significance of the numbers

By referring to the data presented above, we note the high numbers of monitored deaths in June and September compared to the rest of the year (January-October 2020), which can be explained by the spread of infections due to Covid-19, as well as the incident of the alleged botched prison break in Tora maximum-security prison no.1, known in the media as Aqrab (Scorpion) Prison.

In June, four detainees died in the First Mahalla al-Kubra (Gharbia) Police Station, three detainees in the Tora prisons area (Cairo), in addition to separate cases in eight other headquarters, all due to the denial of health care.13 In September, the failed attempt to escape from Tora maximum- security prison- according to the authorities' version - was the cause of the death of four prisoners

13 Data on deaths in custody due to the coronavirus can be found in the following link: https://www.cfjustice.org/%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%af- %d8%a7%d9%84%d9%83%d9%88%d8%b1%d9%88%d9%86%d8%a7/?lang=ar

- who are classified according to the cause of death under "other"14 which led to an increase in the number of deaths in that month compared to others in the same period of the year.

In this regard, reference should be made to the responsibility of the detention authorities for the killing of these four, even if the account of their escape is correct. Article 87 of the Prisons Organization Law states that “Prison administrators and guardians may use their firearms against the prisoners in circumstances including: Preventing a prisoner from escaping if he cannot be prevented by other means, and in this case the first shot must be fired into the air. If the prisoner continues trying to escape after this warning, the persons assigned to guard him may shoot in the direction of his leg.” Since injury to the leg is not supposed to lead to immediate death, especially if prisoners are not armed, the responsibility of causing the prisoners’ direct death can be attributed to the excessive use of force by the security authorities taking advantage of the right to prevent the escape of prisoners.

In general, the rise in the number of deaths due to lack of health care (84 percent of all deaths observed during the reporting period) can be analyzed in terms of being a result of the following:

1. The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic inside detention facilities: CFJ reported 331 suspected and confirmed infections and 17 deaths of Covid-19 during the period from March 13 to August 5, 2020. 2. The failure of the detention authorities to treat patients with chronic diseases and those infected with Covid-19, and even denying them treatment, refusing to allow its entry through family visits, refusing to hand it over if the detainees/ prisoners' families leave it in the safety section, as well as depriving detainees/prisoners of food appropriate to their health conditions, and restricting their ability to obtain it during the visits or from the two canteens of the detention center, either by raising prices and/or by stealing the financial trusts listed in their account, as well as restricting and preventing prisoners from accessing the hygiene and sterilization materials necessary to protect them from diseases and epidemics.15 3. The poor conditions of health facilities inside places of detention and their lack of the simplest tools and means of treatment - such as X-rays, examination and respiration devices - and the failure to allocate sufficient isolation rooms due to the overcrowdedness of all

14 The authorities did not announce the results of the investigation into the circumstances of the death and how it was. Therefore, the CFJ did not have any information regarding the cause of death, so it was listed under "Other". 15 See our report on the heinous practices followed by the detention authorities during the height of the pandemic in Egypt, the monthly report of March and April 2020 in the link:https://www.cfjustice.org/%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B8%D9%84- %D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AD%D8%A9/?lang=ar

penal facilities in general in Egypt and in the central/public prison complexes in particular.16 4. The lack of doctors inside police stations and headquarters to monitor the health status of detainees, and the inconsistency of the number of doctors appointed in the medical facilities of central and public prisons with the numbers of detainees and prisoners there, in addition to being of general specialisations and hence their lack of professional competence to examine and treat specialized cases and chronic diseases, and their lack of availability throughout the day in the detention center clinic. CFJ has also been able to document the doctors’ direct political prejudice and discrimination against political prisoners/detainees, by studying hundreds of documented narratives by the victims' families since 2013. This is the case whether the appointed doctors are among the graduates of the medical department at the Military Technical College or among those enrolled in the security sector after completing their military service, as none of them reach these sites until after the authorities conduct a long security search of their family records to ensure that they are not affiliated - or even sympathize - with any of the groups opposed to the regime. That leads to discrimination against detainees and prisoners, especially those facing cases of a political nature.17 Also, this category of prison medical staff lacks oversight from any higher authority, whether by the Doctors Syndicate or the Ministry of the Interior represented by the Public Prosecutor and the Director of the Prisons Authority. Indeed, security institutions are complicit in ensuring the impunity of prison doctors in the event of failure to treat patients inside the detention facilities or even when directly causing their deaths. Among the common practices in this regard is the refusal of the detention authorities to disclose the doctors’ true identities to the prisoners/detainees, the refusal to provide a list of doctors working in the Prison Authority sector to the Doctors Syndicate, the refusal to provide the medical records of the patients, and the failure to seriously deal with any of the complaints submitted to the Public Prosecutor or the Director General of the Prisons Authority with regards to the doctors or the directors of detention centers.18 There is no doubt that all this

16 This is in contravention of Articles 22 to 26 of the Standard Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which require the detaining authorities to provide treatment services provided by hospitals and that their equipment, tools and pharmaceutical products supplied to them are adequate for the purpose of providing the necessary medical care and treatment for sick prisoners. The provisions also require detention authorities to transfer prisoners to civilian hospitals that provide specialized care in the event that prisoners / detainees request / need it. 17 This comes in contravention of Article 35 of the Code of Ethics for the Profession, no. 238 of 2003 issued on September 5, 2003, which states: “The doctor in charge of health care for those whose freedom is restricted shall provide them with health care of the same awareness and level available for those whose freedom is not restricted, and he is prohibited from performing in a positive or passive manner any acts that constitute participation in torture and other cruel or inhuman treatment, complicity or incitement to these acts.” 18 This is a violation of Article 80 of the Prisons Organization Law 396/1956 which states: “The prison director or his superintendent must accept any serious complaint from the prisoner - verbal or written - and report it to the public prosecution or the competent authority after it is proven in the register prepared for complaints.”

is among the reasons for the increase in deaths among political prisoners/detainees during the current year, since 55 of the total 84 deaths, or 65 percent of the deaths in detention facilities occured due to denial of health care.

Also, by analyzing the above data, it becomes clear that the increase in the number of deaths due to torture inside police stations and headquarters reflects the consequences of the systematic practice of the security authorities in subjecting detainees to physical and psychological torture in police stations and headquarters, especially during their enforced disappearance and during the period of interrogation with the purpose of coercing them to make confessions or to abuse them on the basis of their political, ethnic or gender affiliations. This indicates the absence of judicial inspection of the practices targeting pretrial detainees, the unavailability of a resident doctor to help critical cases, as well as the intransigence of the police station officials in transporting patients to hospitals.

Also, by examining the data, it is evident that two suicides occurred during this year among pretrial detainees in the police stations of Desouk (Kafr El Sheikh) and Al-Qanater (Qalyubia), which indicates the absence of mental health care facilities and services within the police stations that would follow up on the psychological state and the mental well-being of detainees for the purpose of their protection and the administration of justice.

On the other hand, the increase in the number of deaths due to the denial of health care and the poor conditions of detention in central and public prisons - compared to police stations - can be explained by:

1. The widespread practices of systematic ill-treatment, and the excessive use of disciplinary tools by the detention authorities in central and public prisons against detainees /prisoners,19 especially stripping of belongings,20 alienation, and solitary confinement, and

19 See our semi-annual report for 2020 in the link: https://www.cfjustice.org/%D9%85%D9%86- %D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%87%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A5%D9%84%D9%89- %D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%B9%D8%A9/?lang=ar 20 This comes in contravention of the Prisons Organization Law and Article 1 of Resolution 691/1998, whereby the first - according to the amendments included in it on October 25, 2015 - imposes on the detaining authorities to provide beds, mattresses, pillows, blankets, food and personal hygiene utensils, and other living necessities for detainees, while the other imposes on the authorities provision of beds, pillows, blankets, mats, food tools and personal hygiene for prisoners. In fact, the detaining authorities do not fail to provide these supplies, but rather strip prisoners / detainees of what their families bring to the detention centers and abuse them by leaving them on a barren concrete floor resulting in kidney disease, asthma and other internal and respiratory diseases.

deliberately denying them access to adequate food,21 clean water and medicine,22 and stopping their access to specialized health services - through hospitals and outpatient clinics - upon the approval of medical units inside prisons, which in turn are subject to the approval of the prison doctor, who often does not cooperate especially in the case of victims who are detained/prisoners in connection with cases of a political nature as explained above. 2. Because of the failure of the detention authorities to isolate confirmed and suspected cases of the Covid-19 virus and failing to conduct contract tracing measures. Rather, patients and contacts are crammed in narrow rooms according to the narratives which CFJ has documented during the reporting year.

It is noteworthy in this regard to highlight the responsibility of the prison warden in question within the Tora prisons area for the deaths of two defendants on the 10th and 31st of August 2020, one of whom was under trial and the other under pretrial detention.

In the first incident, the primary cause of death was the failure of the prison administration to provide means of protection and safety inside the wards and cells, and the allocation of decent and safe places for the use of the necessary living tools for the detainees, according to what CFJ learned from the monitoring sources, which led to the death of one of the detainees by burning resulting from electrocution.

As for the second incident, there is an obvious criminal responsibility by the specialist doctor in Tora Investigation Prison (part of the Tora Prison Complex) for his failure to visit the victim Abd al-Rahman Yusef Ahmad Zawal daily, according to Articles 23-44 of the internal regulations of prisons. Abd al-Rahman was placed in solitary confinement for the purpose of discipline three days before his death, and he did not suffer from any illnesses prior to his death, according to the information that our team monitored, and therefore, it is likely that the cause of death is the inhumane conditions that characterize the disciplinary cells as they are very narrow with no toilet or lighting available, and are often isolated, precluding the inmate’s ability to call for help if exposed to any crisis or harm.

Also, it is necessary to indicate the criminal responsibility of the officers of the Tora Prisons Complex and Minya Prisons for the deaths of detainees due to the denial of health care and because

21 This is a violation of the text of Resolution 691/1998 regarding the treatment and livelihood of prisoners, especially the provisions relating to the responsibility of the detention authorities to provide adequate food for those with chronic diseases, in addition to violating this, the authorities proceed to deny detainees / prisoners access to food appropriate to their health conditions in violation of the law. 22 Unlike the case in police stations where supplies for families of the accused are easily accessible because of their proximity to their place of residence and its wider spread - geographically - compared to central and public prisons, and then its relative proximity to hospitals and pharmacies, and this benefits patients among detainees in general - as it appears from the above analysis - unless the detaining authorities decide to abuse them for any reason or decide to torture them to death.

the authorities in Tora made a decision to expel those who have suspected infections of Covid-19 instead of treating them. Sixteen of the 41 incidents of expulsion occurred in June only, all of which occurred in the Tora prison area, where the detention authorities expelled the detainees/prisoners to the maximum-security Minya prison and the Minya Liman prison after they were suspected of having the virus.

By looking at the death data this month, it becomes clear that this coincided with the death of three detainees in the same facility (Tora Prisons Complex), followed by the death of three others in the Minya prison area in August and October as a result of being denied health care, indicating that the Tora Investigation Prison warden violated his responsibilities, in his capacity as the person responsible for the transfer of suspected cases of Covid-19 to Minya prisons without the necessary medical examination and without contact tracing, as well as the crime of transferring them to other detention facilities instead of health institutions that carry out their duties in treating them, as well as arbitrarily transferring them to remote places of detention where they are unable to communicate with their families. This incident was against the backdrop of the detention authorities’ attack in Tora Investigation Prison on the cells to retaliate against those who leaked letters of distress from inside their prison to pressure the authorities to improve their living and health conditions.

Third: Victims at risk of death

Yahya Ayman Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed El-Faramawy, Belbeis Police Station

In March 2019, Yahya was arrested for interrogation in Case 450/2019 (Administrative Belbeis) on charges of joining a terrorist group, possessing leaflets and demonstrating without a permit. His family narrates that Yahya is detained in Belbeis police station in a small room that he shares with 23 people, one that does not see the sun and does not have ventilation with clean air. Since he is a patient with a tumor in the throat and needs continuous follow-up at the Oncology Institute every three months, the family applied for medical examination, and permission to follow up his case at the National Cancer Institute, but their requests were rejected, and they know nothing about the development of his health conditions since March 2020 (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in June 2020).

Mustafa Mahmoud Ahmed Abdel Aal, Tora Investigation Prison

Mustafa has been arrested since September 16, 2019, and the authorities transferred him to Tora Investigation Prison, where his family says he is suffering from lack of medical care, high blood pressure, and deteriorating health as he was diagnosed with acute anemia, narrowing of the arteries and pneumonia. The family narrates that the prison administration provided Mustafa with nothing but a manual medical examination - inside his detention facility - by a doctor whose identity he did not know. No other health care was provided to him. The family also mentioned the prison administration's restrictions on the entry of medicine for Mustafa, as it allows only one item per package. Although the family has submitted numerous complaints and requests to the Public Prosecutor and the Cairo Security Directorate regarding the status of their relative, their requests have not received any response to date (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in June 2020).

Ahmed Abdel-Aal Al-Sayed Farag, 58 years old, an employee of Helwan Company for Engineering Industries

Ahmed was arrested in September 2013, and kept moving between prisons and detention centers until he was settled in Minya General Prison from August 2018. Ahmed suffers from a blockage of his coronary artery, and the prison administration is still refusing to do the necessary tests and perform the surgery he needs according to his diagnosis before arrest.

His family narrates that earlier, during his detention in Cairo prison, medical examinations were made and an appointment was set for the heart operation he needed, but they were surprised that he was deported before the operation. It then became customary for Ahmed's heart attacks to pass inside the detention facilities without any attention or follow-up on the part of the authorities, as the family reports that their relative suffered heart attacks during their visits to him, and while he was detained in his cell, and the prisoners kept knocking on the doors asking for aid but in vain.

The family submitted many requests for health pardons and reliefs to the Prison Authority and the Public Prosecutor, including requests to conduct the operation scheduled for him according to medical reports, but received no response (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in February 2020).

A.N., 41, an engineer and member of a political party

On August 14, 2014, A.N. was surprised to find a security force breaking into the door of his house, damaging its contents, and arresting him. Then they took him to the headquarters of the National Security in Menouf, where he was tortured and brought before the Shebin al-Kom Prosecutor five days later and interrogated without the presence of a lawyer to defend him. Then he was held at the headquarters of the prisoner deportations in Shebin al-Kom. He continued to move between different places of detention until May 2019, when he was transferred to Wadi al- Natrun 1 prison, where he suffered most from poor conditions of detention, as he had a fourth- degree ulcer in the stomach and esophagus, and chest sensitivity.

According to his family's account, during the torture inside the National Security headquarters, A.N developed an epileptic focus behind his left eye, after a National Security investigator struck his head with a concrete pillar, and the focus led to repeated epileptic fits. He also suffered a herniated disc in four vertebrae in the back and lacerated other vertebrae as a result of torture, and the family learned about this when he was shown at Shebin Al-Kom Teaching Hospital in November 2014 for X-rays of his back vertebrae and a brain scan, and his injuries were revealed, however, he did not receive proper health care and still copes with his pain with painkillers

Then the deportations followed, and since 2018, the chest pain and shortness of breath intensified, and his family submitted requests to the detention authorities to present him to a specialized doctor, and he was actually transferred to Sadat General Hospital and had an Echocardiogram of the heart, and the doctor wrote his medical report at that time with the implication that he needed to have a

cardiac catheter installed. On Saturday December 15, 2018, he was transferred to the university hospital, but the latter refused to acknowledge all his medical reports, and informed him that they would perform the x-rays, tests, and medical examinations again. There, cardiograms and regular x-rays were performed, and the hospital set an appointment for an ECO scan on February 6, 2019, that is, after more than a month, despite having had a heart attack about three times, and when the echocardiogram was performed, the doctor told them that his heart was working at only 60 percent. He recommended installing a catheter in the heart, which was not done.

Since July, A.N. has suffered from frequent faintings lasting for about 6 hours, and experiences sudden high and low blood pressure. His family continues to send many calls to officials, to no avail (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in August 2020).

Ali Abbas Muhammad Barakat, 56 years old, lawyer and human rights defender, Wadi al-Natrun Annex prison

Ali was arrested on December 18, 2016 from his private work office without being shown an arrest warrant or permission to search his office. During the raid, he was beaten, the contents of the office were broken, and the files of some cases that he was examining were stolen. No reasons were given to what was done then.

After that, Ali was subjected to enforced disappearance until January 18,2017 at the National Security headquarters in Nasr City. Then he was transferred to Shebin al-Kom prison, where he was severely tortured by officers and members of Shebin al-Kom General Prison upon his request to refer him to the doctor. He was subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, insults, humiliation, ban on medication and food, exercise and wearing of clothes, entry to the toilet, visiting family, and the authorities deliberately insulted him without any reasons. Faced with this, Ali filed several complaints against the officials of Shebin al-Kom General Prison because they prevented him from obtaining all his belongings and his rights, such as clothes, cover, visits, food, and exercise, but his complaints went in vain.

Before his arrest, Ali was suffering from diabetes, hypertension, liver, esophageal varices and an enlarged prostate. Because of the poor detention conditions, his health deteriorated further. He suffered frequent bleeding due to blood flow and a lack of platelets. Then due to torture, differnt parts of his body were swollen, and he severed the right shoulder tendon and neuritis. Despite this, his presentation to the doctor does not exceed an outward examination of his body and some painkillers, without proper medical care. For example, no tests or x-rays were done to diagnose his health condition. Rather, Ali continues to take the medicine that was prescribed to him after the last real diagnosis before his arrest, while the prison pharmacy does not provide most of his medicine, but he is forced to bring it from outside.

In a medical report conducted at Shebin Al-Kom University Hospital on March 14, 2017, followed by a liver scan and blood analysis over the next two years, it was proven that Ali's shoulder tendon was cut, and that he had neuritis, hepatitis C virus and cirrhosis, an increase in the pressure of the hepatic artery, a rise in blood fluidity, and a shortage of platelets, and the family was able to see only some of the results of those tests.

The family submitted several reports and telegrams to demand medical examination for Ali, and the last request for a medical examination (even at his personal expense) was submitted in February 2020, in which the family's demand was that x-rays and analyses be done, even at their own expense, based on medical reports, especially as they proved the presence of severe blood platelet deficiency due to his continuous bleeding, which led the doctor to recommend that he need an urgent blood platelet transfusion. His family added that Ali fell into a liver coma on Saturday July 7, and remained completely unconscious for two days. In this incident, the authorities transferred him to the One-Day Hospital, which refused to receive him due to his late condition, so he was transferred to Wadi al-Natrun Prison Hospital 440, in which he was injected with solutions and prescribed medication for 18 days until his condition began to be relatively stable, so he was transferred to his detention facility in the Wadi Natrun Prison Annex on 22 July.

When the family were asked whether they had access to medical reports of his condition, they answered that they had not learned anything from them and that they feared about his health in light of the renewed spread of the coronavirus in prisons and detention centers (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in August 2020).

Sumaya Maher Ahmed Hazima, Qanater Women's Prison

Sumaya was arrested on October 17, 2017 from her home. The family recounts that the security forces stormed the house and searched it in a humiliating manner. They also seized a laptop and five mobile phones. Her mother knew - when she insisted on going with the security forces after the arrest of Sumaya - that a large number of forces - consisting of six prisoner transfer vehicles and six police vehicles - came to arrest her daughter. The mother followed the security forces until they reached the headquarters of the National Security Agency in the Fifth Settlement, and when asking about Sumaya, the authorities denied her presence or entry to the building in the first place.

The family sent telegrams on October 18, 2017 to the Minister of Interior, the Public Prosecutor, the Director of Al-Buhaira Security, and the Director of the Prisons Authority. Sumaya continued to be referred to the prosecution office without the presence of her lawyer and without allowing her to contact any lawyers or her family, until they reached the location and date of one of the investigation sessions she attended, and December 24, 2018 was the first day that the family and Sumaya's lawyer were able to communicate with her and attend the investigation sessions with her.

Sumaya disappeared for 11 months in complete solitary confinement, completely isolated from the outside world, and the authorities did not enable her to deal or speak to anyone. Tools of abuse and discrimination were clearly applied against her, as the family reports that the authorities did not allow Sumaya to read the Holy Quran except for one hour a day, and when she asked to be exposed to the sun for fear of diseases, they said she must take off her veil and only go out for five minutes, which is what actually happened.

Also, Sumaya was threatened with death, as the authorities informed her that she is “nonexistent” in this case, meaning that her detention and her presence with the security authorities is not registered in any official papers, and that she will be subject to execution without investigation or trial.

Sumaya remained in this condition until she was transferred to Al-Qanater prison on 9/11/2018, and there, she was banned from visits without any reasons, and even after the door to visit was opened - after the spread of the pandemic inside the facility - and after the family got a confirmation of the date of her visit on August 30, 2020, her mother entered the facility, her belongings were searched, and the things she brought for Sumaya were delivered to her, but the mother was asked to wait for nine hours outside until a prison officer told her that visiting her daughter is still prohibited.

Sumaya faces many kinds of suffering in Al-Qanater prison, including cells and toilets that are not suitable for human use, humidity and damp throughout the headquarters, the intransigence of authorities in handing over her belongings if delivered through the families of her colleagues, in addition to her suffering of continuous colic pain, joint infections and weak immunity, which makes her vulnerable to infectious diseases, especially in the event of an outbreak of Covid-19 inside the detention facilities (CFJ recorded the latest update of this case in September 2020).

B. A. - 47 years old - math teacher - born in Sharkia governorate - married and father of 5 children

On February 5, 2016, B.A. was arrested from the Ismailia governorate by police and national security forces. He was beaten and restrained without showing any arrest warrant, then taken to the headquarters of the National Security Agency in Zagazig Governorate, where he was forcibly disappeared until the end of April 2016.

B.A. was investigated on charges of destroying an electrical transformer, forming a gang to commit violent operations, and damaging a car owned by Al-Ahram newspaper. After his case was referred to military trial, it was registered under no. 357/2018/military felonies/Ismailia. The court sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. He was then charged with incitement to murder in a separate case, no. 141/2018/Emergency State Security/Criminal, and was sentenced to 10 years

imprisonment. Then, on June 20, 2020, B.A. was shocked to find himself included in case no. 15550/2015 on charges of protesting and joining the Muslim Brotherhood. The case is still under investigation.

The family narrates that B.A. was severely tortured at the National Security headquarters in Zagazig, as the authorities beat him and gave him electric shocks throughout his body, in addition to psychologically torturing him by blindfolding him and barring him from food.

Afterwards, B.A. was moved between different facilities, the last of which was Zagazig Public Prison, in which he suffered -and continues to suffer- from the intransigence and mistreatment of the prison administration, by depriving him of exercise, and the entry of winter clothes and food, according to what the family told CFJ team. In addition, B.A. shares his cramped cell with twenty detainees, all suffering from poor ventilation and lack of hygiene. At the beginning of 2017, B.A. started suffering from symptoms of illness, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, loss of teeth and severe pain in the anal area, and despite his constant complaints, the authorities did not refer him to the prison doctor, but rather prevented him from receiving medicines and painkillers, which led to a severe deterioration in his health condition.

Since March 2020, B.A. has been banned from receiving visits because of the Ministry of Interior's decision to prohibit family and lawyer visits in all detention facilities. His family has not been able to check on his condition or pick up any information about him since the last visit on February 29, in which he complained about his continued pain, lack of exposure to the sun, and the authorities' banning of his hours of exercise, and bone pain, without attention or follow-up from the detention authorities. Then, after the decision to allow family visits, his family only saw him from behind a glass screen for 20 minutes, during which they could not be reassured of his wellbeing.

Ibrahim Ezzedine Ibrahim Salama, 28, a researcher at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms

On June 11, 2019, National Security Forces detained Ibrahim from the vicinity of his house after being arrested by plainclothes security men, then escorted him to an unknown destination. As soon he disappeared, his family rushed to submit a report to the Public Prosecutor - No. 8077 of 2019 - that he was forcibly disappeared, and they also filed a lawsuit - No. 56026 for the year 73 - before the administrative court to demand the disclosure of his location.

At the place of his enforced disappearance, Ibrahim was subjected to insults, beatings, physical and psychological torture, intimidation, death threats, and abuse by forcing him to raise his hands throughout the days of his enforced disappearance. Detention authorities forced him to write confessions on fabricated charges until he appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution on November 26, 2019 Pending Case No. 488 of 2019, Supreme State Security, where he was

charged with spreading false news and participating in activities of a terrorist group with the aim of harming the country's security.

Inside Tora Investigation Prison, Ibrahim suffers from denial of health care, as he suffers from asthma and back pain, and his family fears that he will be infected with Covid-19 in his prison. In addition, Ibrahim suffered from psychological trauma disorders, and despite his lawyers' request to present him to a psychiatrist due to his deteriorating health, the detention authorities did not respond, refused to implement the prosecution’s decision to refer him to a specialist doctor, barred him from receiving medication, and did not provide him with the necessary medicine, which raises his family's fears for his safety - both physically and psychologically - inside the detention facility.

Mustafa Hassan Ali Muhammad Lasheen

Mustafa is 56 years old and worked - before his detention - as a teacher of Arabic calligraphy at Kafr Saqr Center in the Sharqia Governorate.

In August 2020, National Security Forces stormed the Mustafa’s home and searched it, seized his laptop, and took him to the Kafr Saqr Police Station, where he was forcibly disappeared for three days, after which he was brought before the Kafr Saqr Prosecutor and detained in the aforementioned police station, where he was charged in Case No. 2900 of 2020, Misdemeanor Emergency State Security of Kafr Saqr for distributing leaflets, and the case is still under investigation.

The police station authorities allow visits to Mustafa three times a month, including a visit in which the detainee’s clothes, food, medicine and some sums of money are placed on one table, while his family is allowed to see him in person once - in those three visits and during the whole month - through an iron wire in a very crowded narrow room.

Mustafa suffers from the authorities deliberate denial of health care for him. He suffers from shortness of breath, kidney and urinary tract diseases, and worn out joints in one of his feet, and he had been told by his private doctor - before his arrest - of the necessity to have an artificial joint in his foot. But since the detention authorities did not perform their role in signing the examination or treatment, they caused Mustafa to become disabled on one of his feet, in addition to having previously amputated some limbs of his left hand, which made him - and before his detention - with special needs, and the detention authorities did not take any of this into consideration in terms of detection of his health conditions, follow-up, or treatment inside his prison. The family narrates the effect of the authorities' denial of the necessary health care, citing the example of his entry to court in September 2020, when Mustafa was carried by other people and could not move, and the most severe signs of pain and disease appeared on his face The family is still appealing to the authorities to release him in order to be able to treat him before it is too late.

Eid Muhammad Ismail Hassan Dahroug, 71, Retired general manager and former head of the Freedom and Justice Party at Abu Hammad Center

On May 14, 2014, a number of police officers arbitrarily arrested Dahroug - while they wore civilian clothes - from inside his house in Alexandria, blindfolded him and took him to an unknown location. On the following day, Dahroug was brought before the Muharram Bey prosecutor and interrogated in Case No. 56458/2013, which was known in the media as Conspiracy with Hamas. Dahroug was held in solitary confinement in Tora Maximum Security Prison 1, known in the media as Scorpion Prison, until October 1, 2019, where he suffered from a ban on visits and the entry of blankets and medicine.

After that, Dahroug was transferred to a Police Station in Nasr City, and on September 11, 2019, the court acquitted him and ordered his release. Despite this, he remained in detention without legal basis. Dahroug then moved - on October 28, 2019 - to Abu Hammad Police Station, where he was informed that he was added to Case No. 1178 of 2019 on charges of demonstrating without a permit, spreading false news on social media and trying to overthrow the regime. There, Dahroug's suffering intensified from the ill-treatment of the detention authorities, as they denied him access to medicine, blankets, and food, and allowed him to see his relatives for only five minutes from behind an iron wire, while they kept him in a very cramped cell that Dahroug shared with 13 other detainees.

Since his arrest, Dahroug's health conditions began to deteriorate. He had been suffering from kidney failure since 2013. His family submitted a request for a medical examination, which was done in Al-Qasr Al-Aini Hospital. The doctor issued a report stating that Dahroug was suffering from deterioration and atrophy in kidneys and that he needs to have the kidney removed, and that he also suffers from difficulty in urine flow and prostate enlargement, and the report stated that he should undergo an urgent surgery. Nevertheless, the prison administration was intransigent to transfer Dahroug to hospital for the operation and necessary checks. In addition to this, Dahroug suffers from high blood pressure, severe nerve weakness, hemorrhoids, severe foot swelling, and paralysis in his left hand. According to the family's account, Dahroug lost consciousness twice during court sessions due to ill-treatment, malnutrition and denial of health care.

The family recounts that Dahroug went on hunger strike several times to demand improvement in his detention conditions. Despite his serious health condition, the authorities have denied him treatment, examination by a specialized doctor, referring him to a doctor for examination, or transfer to hospital. Faced with this, his family sent many complaints to the Prisons Authority, the Public Prosecutor's office, and the National Council for Human Rights, but all of them were without response or effect.

Enas Fawzi Hassan Hammouda, 44, from Alexandria governorate

On January 28, 2019, late at night, the National Security forces stormed the house of Enas and searched it in a humiliating manner, smashing its contents, and taking her personal belongings such as a computer, camera and cell phones. Then they took Enas, her son and her daughter to the Third Montazah Police Station, where the investigation was conducted with them by National Security officers. After the authorities released the son and daughter, Enas was brought before the Mansheya Court, pending case No. 606 of 2019, on charges of spreading false news on social media, joining a banned group, and possessing unlawful publications. After that, Enas was transferred to Damanhour Prison (Al-Abadiya), where the family reported that the authorities placed her in the “drugs ward” known for its poor ventilation and lack of sleeping facilities.

Enas suffers from a herniated disc, chest and sinus sensitivity, and her health conditions have deteriorated due to the poor conditions of her detention. After many attempts by her family, Enas was examined in the prison hospital and allowed to use the respirator provided by the family during

her visit, but her health remains under great threat due to the authorities’ refusal to provide proper care for her condition.

Fourth: Documented narratives

Mustafa Kassem Abdullah Muhammad, 35 years old, American/Egyptian, owner of an immigration office in America.

Mustafa was arrested on 14/08/2013 by security authorities in uniform after the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in dispersal, and he was taken to Cairo Stadium and then to El-Khalifa Police Station, where he was beaten until his hearing sense deteriorated and bruises appeared on his body. When he was referred to the prosecution, Mustafa proved the signs of beatings in the official record, but the prosecutor did not sign the medical examination or question the perpetrators. Rather, he was charged in the Dispersal of Rabaa case, registered under No. 34150 for the year 2015, the First Nasr City Felonies, bearing No. 2985 for the year 2015 in the East of Cairo.

Mustafa was transferred between several headquarters. First, he was transferred to Abu Zaabal Prison for a period of 6 months, during which he complained about the lack of hygiene and the overcrowding of 90 prisoners in one cell.

Then, Mustafa was transferred to Istiqbal Tora prison in early 2015, where his wife visited him for the first time. Mustafa reported that he was being held with 30 prisoners in an unclean cell which the sun does not reach, and everyone uses an open bathroom. There, Mustafa had swelling all over his body and it was not known why because he was denied medical care in his prison. Mustafa's colleagues volunteered to treat him, and finally, the prison administration allowed the family to take a blood sample for analysis and present it to an outside doctor.

Mustafa was diagnosed by the external doctor after examining the sample with thyroid disorders and A virus, and after the family had to pay sums of money, in an illegal way to visiting officials, as the wife learned from the prisoners' families that it was the usual method of prison, especially since treatment was not available in a pharmacy the prison. The family was able to enter some medications, pump changes, insulin, pain reliever and endocrine therapy.

Then, Mustafa moved to Tora prison (investigation), and was held in a room containing 6 prisoners - although it can accommodate only one - who shared the concrete floor of the cell. And Mustafa suffered from preventing the entry of winter blankets during the cold weather, while allowing its entry in the summer only, and preventing most of the food during the visit (according to his family's statements).

And in all the prisons where Mustafa moved to, his main complaint - according to his family - was about the spread of insects (Cimex), ants and mosquitoes, the presence of mice inside the cell and the bathrooms, and he was forced to go to the toilet in front of all prisoners because there was no door or curtain, as the cell space could not accommodate the number of inmates trapped in, which is often enough for only one.

In September 2018, Judge Hassan Farid issued the verdict in the case known in the media as “Rabaa Dispersal,” and Mustafa was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and the US embassy tried to intervene to release him as an American national, but the attempts did not help, so Mustafa declared a hunger strike. The prison administration prevented him from visits- as a punishment - to force him to end the strike, and Mustafa persevered on his strike until he was subjected to a repeated diabetic coma.

At the same time, the prison doctor refused to write a report on his condition and ordered him to drink fluids to raise his blood sugar level. Mustafa continued his strike for five months until he fell into a long coma, from which he woke up in intensive care at the Liman Hospital, and there his health condition did not improve. Rather, he was denied medical care and the hospital doctor

neglected his condition, except when blood sugar decreased, and the family tried a lot to see the medical reports For Mustafa's case, but they were not allowed to.

The family narrates the last details in Mustafa’s life during his visit on 08/01/2020 at Tora Liman Hospital, where Mustafa suffered from constant vomiting, and he mentioned to them that because of the unpleasant odors in the place and he had to put the mask on his nose all the time in intensive care, until the family received the news of his death on 13/01/2020 after long suffering from medical negligence.

Documented narratives 1: Mustafa Kassem Abdullah Muhammad 35 years, an American / Egyptian, owner of an immigration office in America.

A. R., 43 years old, nutritionist, Sharkia governorate

On October 28, 2018, A. R. was arrested from his workplace by the National Security Forces, an incident in which the deceased was subjected to enforced disappearance for two days inside the National Security headquarters in Zagazig, then arbitrary detention at Belbeis Police Station in Sharkia Governorate after he was accused of joining a banned group and receiving foreign funding. The deceased suffered from severe overcrowding, poor hygiene and poor food in his cramped prison, and despite his severe suffering with C virus and liver cirrhosis, the administration of the Belbeis Police Station - in which he was held - deliberately denied his health care, and was intransigent in allowing entering of medicine to him, despite persistent complaints from his family to the Attorney General, which did not help as well.

Documented narratives 2: A. R., 43 years old, nutritionist, Sharkia governorate

Ibrahim Hassan Abd El-Ghani Bataa, 61, Post Office Inspector, Sharkia Governorate, Kafr Saqr Police Headquarters

Ibrahim was arrested on June 11, 2019, from one of his relatives' homes, as he was accused of joining a banned group founded in violation of the law. Ibrahim remained in prison for 15 days pending Case no 1137/2019 (Misdemeanor State Security Emergency) at Zagazig Police Station, after which the deceased was transferred between different detention facilities until he settled in Kafr Saqr Police Station, where his health condition began to deteriorate greatly.

Ibrahim's suffering began with a slight cough prior to his arrest, and the detention authorities were very intransigent about allowing him to perform the necessary checks and x-rays on his chest, despite his family submitting numerous requests to the prosecution to allow his exit to perform the necessary checks and x-rays at their own expense, and this situation continued until January 28. 2020, when the deceased was shocked to find a fracture in the thigh bone while wearing his pants,

and because of his severe pain, he was transferred to Zagazig General Hospital, where a government doctor conducted a medical examination, and Ibrahim asked him to perform a chest x-ray because he felt severe pain in it, and when the x-ray was done, it showed that Ibrahim had cancerous tumors all over his body. Ibrahim was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit, which did not have an oncology department or a pulmonologist doctor, and after two days he was transferred to a maximum-security room inside the hospital. The family recounts: "We used to deceive them, but we would change it and eat it because he could not know how to move, and there was no chest doctor or tumor in it, so when we asked, we answered a doctor who was following the case, and they refused the request."

Ibrahim was then transferred to the oncology department of the university hospital, which refused to receive him due to the closure of the outpatient clinics, then Ibrahim was transferred again the next day, and this time the oncology department at the outpatient clinics refused to treat his case, arguing that the patient should have bone scintigraphy, MRI, and a CT scan of the brain and chest. His family began to take the necessary measures to make the X-rays and they were actually performed on him, but his death was faster than those procedures, as Ibrahim died on February 9, 2020 before even receiving the results of the radiological reports, which then proved the spread of tumors in all his body, and also proved the responsibility of the detention authorities at Kafr Saqr Police Headquarters on his condition, as they obstructed in conducting the necessary x-rays on him for a long time, and refused the family's repeated requests to perform it at their own expense, which led to the death of Ibrahim as a result of the denial of necessary health care. (CFJ documented his case in July 2020).

Documented narratives 3: Ibrahim Hassan Abd El-Ghani Bataa, 61, Post Office Inspector, Sharkia Governorate, Kafr Saqr Police Headquarters

A.F., 54 years old, first Arabic language teacher, Zagazig Public Prison

The deceased belonged to Sharkia Governorate - Belbeis Center. On March 5, 2019, National Security Forces - with the approval of the school manager- broke into his workplace, put him in a microbus and took him to the Belbeis police station, where he stayed for a week without being referred to the prosecutor. Later, A.F. appeared before the Belbeis Court, on charges of possessing leaflets, demonstrating without permission, and belonging to a group founded in violation of the law.

Soon afterwards, the deceased was transferred to Zagazig Public Prison, where he remained suffering from overcrowding in a cramped cell with 30 people without proper ventilation, and the door was only opened to them twice a week. The deceased was suffering from chronic diseases such as the Hepatitis C virus and esophageal varices, and he was unable to take his medicine

regularly due to the intransigence of the prison administration in allowing the medicine in or / and bringing it to him.

On June 23, 2020, the deceased felt a high temperature, a cough, and the inability to breathe properly, and he requested examination, and when the doctor examined him on June 25, he did not care about A.F and returned him to the same room in which 15 individuals were congested, all suffering the same symptoms. The deceased's condition deteriorated due to a high temperature, fainting, and frequent vomiting accompanied by blood.

The deceased remained in this condition for days, until the prison administration transferred him on June 30, 2020 to Al-Ahrar Governmental Hospital, then returned him to Zagazig Public Prison on July 2, 2020 despite his poor condition, and he remained in the same room with the rest of the detainees until July 4, when he fell into a continuous state of syncope, and his family was not notified of his case until he passed away on July 6 (CFJ documented the case in September 2020).

Documented narratives 4: A.F., 54 years old, Arabic language teacher, Zagazig Public Prison

Amr Ali Ali Abu Khalil, 58, is a consultant psychiatrist at Mamoura Psychiatric Hospital

On October 2, 2019, a number of Police and National Security officers arrested Amr while practicing his work inside his private clinic in Bolkly El Raml district in Alexandria. His family narrates that after his arrest, the authorities went to his house and seized a large sum of money (more than 40,000 Egyptian pounds), a tablet, a home TV, gold jewelry, movables, personal belongings, and documents.

At first, Amr was subjected to enforced disappearance inside the Security Directorate of Alexandria, then he was referred to the prosecution on October 6, 2019, pending on case no. 1118, on charges of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. Then, Amr was transferred to Tora Maximum-Security Prison 1 (Scorpion), where the authorities took the initiative to take punitive action against him by detaining him in solitary confinement and disciplinary ward without justification.

In a cell that is supposed to be solitary confinement, Amr shared the space of a cramped room with three to five detainees. The prison administration did not provide any beds, seats, or furniture. Rather, Amr and his cellmates had to sit and sleep on an extremely hot concrete floor in summer and extremely cold in winter. The sun never enters his room, and clean air does not reach it, as it overlooks an inner street of the prison.

There is a place in the cell for toilet only, and when taking a shower, the detainee is forced to strip in front of his cellmates and wash over the ground toilet, while his cellmates try to dry the water because there is no drain inside the room.

Amr was subjected to a combination of arbitrariness and medical negligence, as the authorities prevented him from wearing his medical glasses as well as from receiving and taking his medication regularly since the beginning of his detention, even though he was ill with blood pressure, diabetes, neuritis and inguinal hernia. Through his lawyers, CFJ learned that Amr had contracted the Coronavirus inside the detention facility, where he suffered from high temperature, headache and shortness of breath, and the family has not been able to check on him by any means, since Amr's arrival at the Maximum-Security Tora prison 1, the authorities prevented him from family visits and direct contact with his lawyer or any other lawyer, as well as preventing him from receiving clothes and food, and from sending and receiving messages to his family and banned visits to check on each other.

His family sent more than one appeal during his detention in Maximum-Security Tora prison 1 (Scorpion), especially after the family learned of the increase of the Coronavirus symptoms and the deterioration of his health with regard to diabetes, pressure and neuritis. In addition, the liver and kidney enzymes had increased in his body and there was no response to the family’s calls and appeals, until Amr spoke on Sunday 6 September 2020 with the guards through the window at the gate of the cell - which is called “glasses” - demanding that he be transferred to a specialized clinic and to be examined, and to allow the dispensing of medicines, and when the detention authorities confronted him with intransigence and neglect, he became very angry until he lost consciousness and suffered pulmonary embolism, and the prisoners in the rest of the cells in the ward kept knocking on the doors to save the life of Amr, and after a long time had passed, one of the guards opened the cell, and they transferred him to the clinic inside the prison, but it was too late to save him and he died. (CFJ carried out the last case update in September 2020).

Documented narratives 5: Amr Ali Ali Abu Khalil, 58, is a consultant psychiatrist at Mamoura Psychiatric Hospital

Tony Hassan Khalifa Farghali, 44 years old, Postal Service employee (Minya)

Tony was arrested in March 2017 from his home in Minya Governorate without showing permission or an arrest or search warrant. The prosecution charged him with a number of charges, acquitting him in some of them and convicting him in others, and then the judgment was issued in their regard to ten years imprisonment in Minya Liman Public Prison. In the prison, Tony suffered a double fracture in his left foot - in December 2018 - the cause of the accident was not determined, as the prison administration brought him to a non-specialist doctor inside the headquarters, and as the administration did not take the necessary measures for his

condition at that time, gangrene grew in his injured leg, and his family submitted many complaints and appeals to save him, but the authorities did not pay attention to his deteriorating condition, until his family was informed in January 2020 of his death (CFJ documented the case in June 2020).

Documented narratives 6: Tony Hassan Khalifa Farghali, 44 years old, Postal Service employee (Minya)

H. G. 55 years old, teacher with the rank of a school vice-president

The deceased was arrested from his home in March 2020, for being accused of performing the call to prayer from his home with a loud voice, after the ministry of endowments decided to prevent congregational prayer in mosques as part of measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The deceased was then taken to the Mubarak police station in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, where the detention authorities placed him in a narrow room with 22 inmates, a room containing a lavatory without a screen or a separator; it lacked all means of ventilation except for a hood on the top of its wall submerged under layers of dust that barely allowed air to flow from it into the cell. While the inmates were only allowed a few hours of exercise to catch some air, the authorities prevented the deceased from this opportunity as well.

After nearly two months - in May 2020 - a force of police officers- about 14 officers - stormed the cell and asked all the detainees to prepare to collect their belongings to be transferred to another detention facility, without giving any reasons. The deceased arrived with the rest of the detainees at the Mahalla first police station, where he found the cell full of insects, foul-smelling, crowded with 15 people, and topped with three fans operating without stopping at the highest degree, and the detainees could not control the degree of their operation due to the presence of its control panel outside the cell.

The family recounts: “Inside the cell there was a small ventilator that circulated air between the cell and another room in which the detainees were held, and the sterilisation was not carried out during the period of the deceased’s stay in custody. In addition, the place was not clean and there was no way for cleanliness or sterilisation inside, which led the detainee to complain to his family and to those in charge of the detention center.” The detainees asked to raise the room temperature - by lowering the operating temperature of the fans - repeatedly to no avail, and one morning everyone woke up suffering from severe fatigue, high temperature and severe coughing, and they asked the officer to present them to a specialised doctor. But he replied that they should leave the phone numbers of their families with the worker in the canteen, and that the worker would communicate with the families of each of the detainees and request that they send them the medicine, which did not happen, according to the family.

On June 2, 2020, the wife of the deceased came to the police station to give him some vitamins, medicines and food, and upon her arrival she found an ambulance at the entrance of the police station and a doctor in it, and she learned that some of the individuals detained in the department were suspected of contracting coronavirus. The wife waited outside the police station until the suspected cases went out, and found her husband was among them, so she followed the ambulance to find out which hospital the authorities were transporting her husband to, and when she asked the officer to give her husband his belongings that she had brought to him, the warden told her: “Who told you that your husband is here and how did you get here?” And he threatened her with arrest. The health conditions of the detainee worsened as his wife and family were prevented from visiting him and checking on his conditions until they were informed of his death in June (CFJ documented the case in August 2020).

Documented narratives 7: H. G. 55 years old, teacher with the rank of a school vice-president

M. M., 56 years old

M.M.’s relatives narrate that while he was detained in the First 10th of Ramadan Police Station (Sharkia governorate), and on February 27, the deceased suffered from severe fatigue, and his cellmates called for help by knocking on the door so that the administration could intervene to save him.

His relatives recount: “The deceased was fasting on this day and before the sunset call to prayer, he was very tired, and his cellmates called for help, one of the officers came and accompanied him outside to breathe some air, then after a few minutes he entered the detention room and asked his cellmates to communicate with his family.” The family was informed on 28/02/2020, of the death of their relative inside his prison cell.

The family says that M. M. was suffering from diabetes and heart disease before his arrest, and that when his fatigue increased in early January 2020, his relatives asked to perform some medical tests on him, without a response from the prison's administration, in addition to its failure to provide health care and depriving the deceased of his right to appropriate care according to his age and his poor health condition.

Documented narratives 8: M. M., 56 years old

Magdy Taha Muhammad Al-Qalawi, 59, General Manager

Magdy was arrested in January 2019 from his home in Sharkia governorate and interrogated in Case 108/2019 (Misdemeanor State Security Emergency), in which he was charged with numerous accusations, the court acquitted him of some of them and convicted him of others, and then he was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour and a fine of fifty thousand Egyptian pounds.

During his imprisonment in Minya al-Qamh prison, Magdy showed symptoms of severe fatigue, and the prison doctor described his condition as just fatigue until his family was shocked in September 2019 to know that he had been sick for four months (that is, in May 2019), and he was diagnosed with cirrhosis and spread of cancerous tumors in his body. While the prison administration had to provide Magdy with food and medication appropriate to his condition, the administration prevented the entry of drugs and food and forbade exposing him to the sun. Magdy's family submitted numerous requests to the prosecution and the prison administration, to no avail. With his health condition deteriorating significantly, the prison administration transferred him to the Liver Institute on February 6, 2020, and his family learned that the institute refused to receive Magdy's case because it was not in urgent need to be kept in hospital and that they only receive cases of hemorrhage or hepatic coma , and since he was not presented to a specialist doctor, Magdy passed away on February 8, 2020, due to the intransigence and delay of the Minya Al- Qamh prison administration in his treatment and health care (CFJ documented the case in April 2020)

Documented narratives 9: Magdy Taha Muhammad Al-Qalawi, 59, General Manager

Recommendations

Based on the above findings, the Committee for Justice recommends a number of urgent changes in the political and legal frameworks to stop the loss of lives in detention facilities, including:

- Holding accountable those responsible for crimes of enforced disappearance and torture leading to death, ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, activating constitutional provisions criminalizing torture crimes, and suspending officers, officials and supervisors of torture and enforced disappearances. - Amending Articles 40 and 41 of Law No. 94 of 2015, which represent the legal cover for detaining individuals incommunicado for a period of up to 28 days, in contradiction to Article 54 of the constitution, which includes informing the person whose freedom is restricted of the reasons for his arrest and enabling him to contact his lawyer. - Abolishing Article 143 / last paragraph of the Criminal Procedure Law, which permits pretrial detention of persons accused of crimes punishable by life or death for an indefinite period, and returning to the original text that sets a maximum limit of two years pretrial detention, as well as abolishing Article 277 of the same law. - Amending the Prisons Service Law 396/1956 to allow the National Council for Human Rights to visit prisoners, and to carry out detention based on notification to the Public Prosecutor and not based on prior authorization from him. - Obliging officials to deal seriously with family reports submitted to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, the Director of the Prisons Authority, the National Council for Human Rights, and other bodies entrusted with receiving complaints from prisoners / detainees and their families. - Increasing the number of doctors assigned to work inside central and public prisons in proportion to the numbers of detainees and prisoners, and providing the main specialties within prisons (internal medicine, orthopedics, chest and respiratory diseases, etc.), and ensuring their availability throughout the day. - Reducing congestion in the detention facilities, providing an adequate number of isolation rooms during health emergencies, and holding officials in the Tora prison complex - and other detention centers in which cases of Covid-19 emerged - accountable for their responsibility to sanitize the rooms in which these cases appeared and isolate those in contact with confirmed cases in quarantine and following their health status, which are the procedures established according to Articles 46-49 of the internal regulations for organizing prisons, which would have curbed the spread of the pandemic and reduced the number of deaths among prisoners and detainees during its first wave inside the detention facilities.

- Providing health facilities inside prisons with the necessary equipment, tools and professional competencies to face urgent cases with the required efficiency and speed.

With regard to the mental health of detainees and prisoners:

- Obliging the Ministry of Interior and the detention authorities to apply Article 38 of the Prisons Organization Law regarding correspondence between detainees / prisoners and their families, especially during the expected next wave of the pandemic, and to cease the practices of collective punishment and abuse of disciplinary tools and means to abuse prisoners/detainees or/and their families by denying them communication , or the decisions of alienation, prevention of visits, and through prolonged solitary confinement.

With regard to the health and physical safety of detainees and prisoners, require the detention authorities to:

- Applying the rules of separating detainees and prisoners and classifying them within the facilities according to Article 14 of the Prisons Organization Law no. 396/1956. - Allow exercise hours for two hours - morning and evening - daily, as stipulated in Article 15 of the same law. - Providing living supplies, personal and general hygiene, food and drink supplies / tools in accordance with safety and security standards and as determined by the amendments to the Prisons Organization Law of October 25, 2015 and Article 1 of Resolution no. 691/1998 on how prisoners are treated and their living standards. - Providing adequate food for the state of health, and developing and implementing mechanisms for holding prison doctors accountable for their failure to follow up on sick prisoners/detainees’ obtaining appropriate food, which is their responsibility established under the provisions of the internal regulations for organizing prisons. - Establishing and implementing oversight and accountability mechanisms for doctors in central and public prisons to track their responsibility for the safety and lives of detainees and prisoners, especially those in solitary confinement, those with chronic diseases, those with symptoms of infectious diseases / epidemics, those who suffer from health crises that can not tolerate abuse, as well as those who suffer from life-threatening traumas and crises. - Activating the provisions for the health-based release of detainees/prisoners who are diagnosed with diseases that threaten their lives or threaten them with total disability, as stipulated in Article 36 of the Prisons Organization Law no. 396/1956.

-ENDS-