Essam Sultan, a leader of the Wasat Party, complained that while
in Scorpion he has not had access to his lawyer or court papers, and did not
know why he had been summoned to court that day. © 2016 ElWatan News | جريدة الوطن
The authorities also interfered with legal
representation in more severe ways. On August 30, 2016, a lawyer named Mohamed
Sadek, who had represented Scorpion inmates’ relatives, was arrested and
forcibly disappeared by the authorities, according to the Egyptian Coordination
for Rights and Freedoms, an activist and legal support group. Since 2015, Sadek
had won court orders requiring Interior Ministry officials to allow his clients
to visit their relatives in Scorpion, according to one of Sadek’s colleagues.[58]
During a May 11, 2016, court appearance, Essam
Sultan, a Scorpion inmate and deputy head of the moderate Islamist party
al-Wasat, told a judge that he did not see his lawyers in the courtroom, had
never received any of his court papers, and had not been told the reason for
coming to court: whether he was summoned for an interrogation with a prosecutor
or a hearing with a judge.[59]
During an August 9, 2016, court appearance,
Essam al-Arian, a high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood member and former vice
president of the group’s Freedom and Justice Party, told the judge that he was
banned from receiving visits from relatives or lawyers. He said that he hoped
he could meet with lawyers so that they could tell him whether he should talk
during court appearances or not.[60]
“We’re the only means for the lawyer to
contact Gehad. We are the only means,” one of Gehad al-Haddad’s relatives said.
“Even in the visits, it’s very short. So many things get lost without papers
and pens … If [the lawyers] were there to contact, it would help a lot in the defense.”[61]
Lawyers, when allowed to visit, are restricted
to seeing their clients in the office of the prison’s warden or chief of
investigations. A guard or prison official attends every meeting, and neither
lawyer nor inmate is allowed paper or a writing instrument.[62]
The authorities’ interference in the ability
of inmates to have private meetings with their lawyers violates an essential
principle of a fair trial: the right to communicate with a lawyer and prepare a
defense.[63]
|
Most of the
relatives interviewed by Human Rights Watch described similar procedures for
a visit to Scorpion. On visit days, a prison officer begins registering
families at around 6 a.m. Since Scorpion Prison usually allows inside no more
than 30 to 40 of the scores of families who might want to visit on a given
day, many arrive at the prison before dawn to stake a place in line. Family
members who have traveled from governorates far from Cairo sometimes arrive
the night before their visit, bringing blankets to sleep in a dirt lot next
to the main gate of the Tora prison complex. The prison provides no amenities
for visitors waiting outside. One family member said she had seen stray dogs
attack the child of a family waiting during the night.[64]
Once inside the
Scorpion visiting room, relatives enter one of several booths where they can
speak with an inmate for five to ten minutes over a phone line monitored by
the prison and while separated by a glass barrier. Guards stand on both sides
of the barrier, behind both the inmate and the visitor. The authorities have
previously imposed long bans on the presence of children during visits.
Occasionally, guards allow husbands and wives to shake hands.
“It’s just as if you
met an old friend in the street,” the relative of Samy Amin said.[65]
The guards sometimes
shut off the telephone line without warning, and families struggle to
economize time.
“I had my two kids
with me, and one of them took the phone for three minutes and sang a song…and
I took the phone for a minute. I had to ask him something personal,” a
relative of Gehad al-Haddad said.
A placard outside
Scorpion lists items that visitors are forbidden from delivering to inmates,
but relatives told Human Rights Watch that the authorities enforce rules
arbitrarily and forbid them from delivering food, medicine, and clothes that
are not listed as banned items. The authorities do not allow families to
deliver books, newspapers, or writing materials, except for schoolbooks in
some cases, despite such items not being listed as forbidden. The placard
does not state a legal authority for banning the items on the list, according
to relatives.
The sister of a
19-year-old Scorpion inmate accused in a mass military trial said that
Scorpion authorities refused to allow her to deliver winter clothes or new
underwear except on one occasion, during a January 2016 visit from the
National Council for Human Rights.[66] A
relative of Essam al-Haddad said that guards did not allow her family to
deliver winter clothes.[67] Al-Aqeed’s
brother said that guards allow them to deliver a new pair of underwear every
three or four months.[68]
When visits are not
banned, the authorities allow relatives to deliver food in plastic bags but
usually limit the amount to one bag or throw away some of the food, leaving
inmates to rely on a prison diet that all families described as meager and
insufficient for proper nutrition.
“If they allow food,
they allow it in a very humiliating way,” al-Aqeed’s brother said. “They
might take a chicken drumstick with some rice and say this is only what could
be allowed.”[69]
Guards sometimes
take handfuls of food from each bag and combine them, mixing things such as
rice, vegetables and sweets and telling visitors that they are trying to
prevent the smuggling of mobile phones, or joking that they are making
koshari, an Egyptian dish of pasta, rice, and lentils.
“[The guard] emptied
the box – it has rice – and he emptied the rice, and he took [out] two pieces
of pigeon and three or four pieces of liver,” Aya Alaa, the wife of
journalist Hassan al-Qabbani, said of one visit.[70]
The relative of Samy
Amin said guards once picked out a chicken thigh from among the food she
wanted to deliver, ripped it in half and threw away one of the halves. She
took all the food back in anger.[71]
Essam al-Haddad’s
relative told Human Rights Watch in August 2016 that Scorpion authorities had
banned him and eight other inmates in Scorpion and Tora Annex prisons from
receiving visits since early July and had then instituted another blanket
visit ban on August 6, 2016.[72]
|
Inside Scorpion’s cells, conditions are stark.
Though most of the relatives interviewed by Human Rights Watch knew only
partial details, explaining that they did not know more because they chose to
use their limited visits to talk about more important things, they were able to
describe a daily life of routine hardship.
Though severe overcrowding is not a problem in
Scorpion, as it is in many of Egypt’s police stations and other detention
facilities, cells measure around 3.8 square meters (41 square feet) and often
hold several inmates at the same time, according to the relatives interviewed
by Human Rights Watch. They are secured by a metal door with a slot through
which inmates sometimes receive food and communicate with guards and each
other. A metal cover attached to the slot can be engaged and disengaged to
block it.
Each cell has one window placed high in the
rear wall and blocked by a row of metal bars and another row of metal mesh. The
window looks onto an outer corridor where more windows open to the outside, but
the positioning of the window does not allow any direct sunlight into the cell and
cuts off almost all airflow, relatives said. Because of this arrangement, cells
become very hot during the summer.
Though Egyptian law grants all inmates two
hours of exercise per day, Scorpion authorities usually deny this right without
giving a reason, several relatives said. The wife of Hisham al-Mahdy, the
pharmacist, said he regularly asked her to ask their lawyer to file requests
for exercise time.[73] Several
relatives said that some inmates have been locked inside their cells for months
at a time. Others said that the authorities allow them to exercise only by
walking the prison corridors.
The cells lack beds and contain only a raised concrete
platform for sleeping, and most relatives said that inmates do not have
mattresses. One family told Human Rights Watch that their relative had a
mattress in his cell, and three said that their family members had mattresses
in the past but that prison authorities confiscated them.[74]
Instead of mattresses, most inmates use two or
three blankets provided by the prison. Some have obtained cardboard boxes, such
as those used to hold plastic water bottles, and flattened them to provide some
cushioning between their bodies and the concrete.
Each cell contains an exposed flat toilet – a
shallow depression with a hole and raised steps on either side over which the
inmate must squat – and a pipe that intermittently dispenses dirty, unfiltered
water. For drinking water, prisoners rely on the two bottles supplied by the
prison each day or what they can purchase from the prison cafeteria with their
own money.
Scorpion authorities do not allow inmates to
possess many hygiene products and daily necessities, including soap,
toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving kits, plates, eating utensils, watches,
books, prayer rugs, and paper or writing instruments, relatives said. Some
relatives have bribed guards to deliver such items to prisoners, but security
officers confiscate them during regular cell inspections and sometimes even
seize permitted items, such as bottles of water that inmates have purchased.
The daily diet in Scorpion usually consists of
a small meal of eggs, cheese, and bread for breakfast and mixed unsalted rice,
beans, and vegetables served from buckets onto bread loaves for dinner. Often
inmates who occupy the same cell divide portions among themselves.
Aya Alaa, the wife of journalist Hassan
al-Qabbani, told Human Rights Watch that during the month of Ramadan in 2015,
the meal provided by the prison in the evenings to break the daily fast was a
loaf of bread with a piece of halawa – a tahini-based sweet – while the predawn
meal before the fast began each day was beans and rice.[75]
The wife of Hisham al-Mahdy, the pharmacist
accused of ISIS membership, said that by early 2016 he had begun to look pale,
lose significant weight, and that his clothes had become dirty from lack of
washing.
“I kept crying for a week after that,” she
said of seeing him for the first time after a visit ban.[76]
Prisoners are allowed to purchase better food
from the prison cafeteria, but authorities often close it, sometimes for weeks
at a time, and prices range far higher than market value. Whereas a kilo of
oranges might normally cost 3 Egyptian pounds (US$0.34), in Scorpion a prisoner
can buy one orange for that price, Aya Alaa told Human Rights Watch.[77] A
small meal of rice and chicken might have an inflated cost of around 70
Egyptian pounds ($7.90), a can of tuna double in price to 15 Egyptian pounds
($1.70), or a cup of tea or small bottle of water triple to 6 pounds ($0.70).[78]
During visit bans, families cannot deliver
food to supplement the prison diet, and several relatives told Human Rights
Watch that inmates lost significant amounts of weight during the lockdown
period in 2015.
Essam al-Haddad, Morsy’s former foreign policy
advisor, lost 15 kilograms (33 pounds), his relative told Human Rights Watch.[79] Al-Haddad’s
son, Gehad al-Haddad, the former Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, lost 35
kilograms (77 pounds) during the same period, Gehad’s relative said.[80] Aisha
al-Shater said that her father lost 38 kilograms (84 pounds), her brother 27
kilograms (60 pounds), and her brother-in-law 11 kilograms (24 pounds).[81]On
May 17, 2016, former Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Ahmed Aref told Judge Hassan
Farid during a court hearing that he had lost 49 kilograms (108 pounds) due to
the “torture” in prison and requested to be examined by a forensic doctor.
Judge Farid stated that no torture took place in Scorpion and ordered Aref to
display any signs of it, and when Aref refused, ordered him to return to the
prisoners’ cage in the courtroom.[82]
To enable inmates to buy cafeteria food,
families deposit money in their prison accounts, but many families in Egypt –
where 25 percent of the country lived below the World Bank’s poverty line in
2010 – cannot afford to deposit enough money for prisoners to regularly pay for
cafeteria food. Al-Aqeed’s brother and another relative said that they leave
money for him on every visit but that he sometimes receives only partial
amounts in his account and on one occasion did not receive an 8,000-pound
($900) deposit, without explanation from Scorpion authorities.[83]
The ban
on personal hygiene products leaves inmates desperate for alternatives. Aisha
al-Shater said her father told her that he once bought an orange from a guard
for 40 Egyptian pounds ($4.50) in order to use the skin of the fruit to clean
his body.[84] There
are showering facilities in each wing, but relatives said they did not know how
often inmates were allowed to bath. Gehad al-Haddad, who has a scalp infection,
is not allowed to possess any shampoo, making the condition worse, his relative
said.
“Even after they allowed some medications,
they said, ‘No liquids … no drops, no ointments, no painkillers, no
supplements, only critical medications are allowed, and not for everyone,” she
said.[85]
It is
possible that non-Islamist political prisoners are treated somewhat
differently. Eliane Friess, the wife of Ahmed Said, an activist doctor serving
a two-year sentence in Scorpion, said that he was allowed to receive visits
every 15 days with food deliveries, that his cell measured 10 square meters
instead of 3.8 (though it held around 10 detainees), and that Said was allowed
to have a foam mattress and to usually take one hour of exercise per day.
Still,
she said that prison officers arbitrarily seize food deliveries they deem “too
good” for him, that the prison food is considered too poor to eat, and that he
has lost a significant amount of weight. His cell, despite its size and a fan
in the ceiling, receives almost no ventilation and becomes extremely hot in the
summer, she said. Both Said’s wife and sister said that he is denied electric
devices such as small refrigerators, televisions or radios as well as books,
newspapers, and writing materials.[86]
Prisoners held in Scorpion do not receive
visits from doctors, nor does Scorpion have its own medical clinic, though it
does have a pharmacy, relatives said. When prisoners need medical attention,
the authorities transfer them to Tora Liman Prison Hospital, which is located
elsewhere in the Tora prison complex and lacks the kind of treatment available
in outside hospitals. There, relatives said, prisoners receive cursory care
before being returned to Scorpion. Prisoners who are not transferred sometimes
look to fellow inmates with medical experience for advice. Eliane Friess said
inmates consult with her husband Ahmed Said about care and what prescriptions
to acquire.[87]
In some instances, the authorities have
transferred inmates to outside hospitals for treatment, but relatives described
several serious failings with these procedures. They told Human Rights Watch
that the authorities have delayed transfers, sometimes for so long that
treatment is no longer available or seriously delayed, that they require
inmates to receive onerous permissions before routine activities such as
changing floors in a hospital, and that they have sent inmates back to prison
despite doctors’ recommendations to continue outside treatment.
Prisoners with chronic or advanced illnesses
who require regular treatment are particularly vulnerable in such an
environment. According to those interviewed by Human Rights Watch, six Scorpion
prisoners died between May and October 2015, coinciding with the period during
which the authorities banned nearly all visits, essentially cutting off
Scorpion from the outside world.[88]
The regular interference in Scorpion inmates’
medical care amounted to cruel and inhuman treatment, Human Rights Watch found.
Egyptian law regarding prison administration
requires each prison to employ a doctor who on a daily basis must inspect the
prison, meet with sick prisoners and those held in isolation, and submit cases
of life-threatening or “incapacitating” illnesses to the director of the
prison’s medical department in order to consider their conditional release.[89] But
physicians in Egyptian prisons are not institutionally independent: They are
employed by the Interior Ministry, either on fixed-term secondment from the
Health Ministry or after training in the Police Academy and graduating as
Interior Ministry medical officers.
The international norms laid out in the
Mandela Rules state that prisoners should enjoy the same standards of health
care that are available in the community; that prisons shall ensure prompt
access to medical attention in urgent cases; that clinical decisions may only
be taken by the responsible health-care professionals and may not be overruled
or ignored by non-medical prison staff; and that a physician should have daily
access to any prisoner who is sick or complains about their health.[90]
Human Rights Watch was unable to review the
medical records related to the prisoners who died in custody or to conclusively
determine the cause of their deaths, but relatives of three of the deceased
prisoners told Human Rights Watch that Interior Ministry officials denied their
relatives medical release or timely treatment and failed to share health
information.[91]Two
of the men died from cancer, and another had diabetes. In one case, a relative
said that prosecutors pressured them not to file a complaint of inadequate
medical care before they would provide official permission to bury the deceased
prisoner.[92] Human
Rights Watch was unable to interview relatives of the other three Scorpion
prisoners who died in custody.
Ten relatives told Human Rights Watch that
Interior Ministry officials interfered in inmates’ medical treatment by
arbitrarily seizing medicine, delaying or denying treatment, and in two cases
by sedating inmates without their consent.
Interior Ministry authorities interfered with
the care of Abdullah Karam, a 20-year-old Scorpion inmate accused of membership
in the “Helwan Brigades,” a little-known group the government accuses of
anti-police violence in Cairo, by failing to schedule a recommended surgery and
delaying his transfer to an outside hospital.[93]
In late 2015, a relative of Karam, whom police
arrested while he was in secondary school, discovered that Karam had been
transferred to Tora Liman Prison Hospital after complaining that he was
bleeding from his anus. She only knew of the transfer after receiving a call
from another prisoner’s family.[94]
The authorities allowed her to meet with Karam
twice in the two months he was held in the prison hospital. He told her that he
had received medicine and tests, and that doctors told him he needed surgery
for hemorrhoids and that they would prepare the necessary paperwork. After
being transferred back to Scorpion, he received no further information from the
doctors, despite complaints from his lawyer, and no surgery had been scheduled
as of August 2016.[95]
In January 2016, he also began to vomit
regularly after eating, the relative said. Scorpion authorities again
transferred him to Tora Liman Prison Hospital, where doctors said he needed a
gastrointestinal endoscopy. Prison authorities made two failed attempts to
transfer him to Qasr al-Aini Hospital, an independent institution in Cairo,
arriving both times after the hospital’s operating rooms had shut down for the
day.[96]
During a visit to Scorpion Prison on April 10,
2016, Karam complained of shortness of breath, possibly due to poor air
circulation in his cell, his relative said. The authorities sent him again to
the Tora Liman Prison Hospital, where doctors gave him x-rays and told him that
he might be suffering from a pleural effusion, an abnormal amount of fluid
around his lungs. The authorities sent him back to his cell on the same day.[97]
During the April 10 visit, his relative
managed to speak to an Interior Ministry official and tell him about Karam’s
illness and need for better medical care. The official took Karam’s name and
said he would see what he could do. Afterward, Karam received his endoscopy,
which showed that he had gastroesophageal varices, or abnormally enlarged
veins.[98] This
condition occurs most often in people with liver diseases.
Karam’s relative last saw him in July and has
since not been allowed to visit. During this time, as well as during her two
prior visits, the authorities have not allowed her to deliver him the medicine
he has requested.[99]
Scorpion authorities interfered in the
treatment of Mohamed Ali Beshr, a 64-year-old former governor, cabinet minister
and Muslim Brotherhood official, by arbitrarily seizing portions of his
medicine and refusing, on one occasion, to allow him to stay in an outside
hospital for tests. They also failed to inform his family that he had been sent
to a hospital.[100]
Beshr, who is accused of committing espionage
in collaboration with Norway and the United States, has not yet faced trial,
and the Supreme State Security Prosecution has continually renewed his
temporary detention every 45 days since his arrest in November 2014, his son
said.[101]
On September 8, 2015, Beshr’s wife heard from
lawyers representing other Scorpion prisoners that Beshr had suffered a stroke
and been sent to a hospital the day before, Beshr’s son told Human Rights
Watch.
Beshr had been diagnosed with a Hepatitis C
infection around 10 years ago, his son said, and regularly took the drugs
Pennel, for liver dysfunction, Infex, an antiviral, and Tamsulosin, for a
problem with urination.[102]
After hearing that he had suffered a stroke,
Beshr’s wife searched for him at Qasr al-Aini Hospital, where employees said
they had no information. Around a week later, she found out he had been
returned to Scorpion and visited him there.
Beshr told her that the rumor of a stroke had
been false. He had been held for around two days in the Qasr al-Aini prisoners’
ward, which is secluded from the public on the seventh floor, where a doctor
told him that he had a cellular inflammation in his leg and gave him medicine,
his son told Human Rights Watch. Beshr told his wife that Interior Ministry
authorities had not allowed him to undergo further tests to confirm that he did
not have a serious problem, such as deep vein thrombosis, and had taken him
back to Scorpion.
Since his arrest and detention in November
2014, Beshr has not had regular visits from a doctor, and Scorpion guards have
regularly seized arbitrary amounts of the medicine his wife tries to deliver,
his son said.[103]
“If she has 20 tablets, for example, they take
out 10 tablets and they say, ‘That’s enough.’ Every time it’s happening like
that,” he said.
Beshr’s wife last visited him on July 3, 2016,
and did not bring more medicine, since she was able to bring a large amount
during a previous visit, his son said. But the authorities’ visit bans and
confiscation of medicine makes the family afraid that they will deny Beshr his
medicine in the future, he said.[104]
Prison officials have similarly seized
medicine that relatives have attempted to deliver to Khairat al-Shater, who is
66 and has diabetes, hypertension, hypothyroidism, and heart disease, and
received a heart catheterization in 2011. Aisha al-Shater, his daughter, told
Human Rights Watch that the family has requested he be moved to a hospital to
treat his heart disease and diabetes, which she says goes uncontrolled in
Scorpion, but that the authorities have refused.[105]
Aisha al-Shater told Human Rights Watch that
on multiple occasions when she has delivered her father’s heart medicine and
other pills, guards have stripped the pills out of their packaging and mixed
different pills into a bag for delivery to the prison pharmacy, risking that
not all will be delivered. During periods when visits are banned, she said she
cannot deliver any medicine, and on other occasions when she has delivered
medicine, her father has told her that he received a smaller amount than what
she delivered. In late May 2016, Aisha al-Shater told Human Rights Watch that
the prison had banned visits for the past month and a half, preventing her from
delivering any medicine.[106]
Prison authorities have also interfered in the
treatment of Gehad al-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman and son of former
Morsy foreign policy advisor Essam al-Haddad, who has suffered from anemia
since before his arrest.
During visit bans, al-Haddad’s family has not
been able to deliver iron and calcium supplements, his relatives told Human
Rights Watch. During a visit on October 3, 2015, during which he appeared pale
and tired, al-Haddad told his family that he had been fainting frequently, a
relative said. Al-Haddad said that he had been speaking to a fellow inmate
through the slot in his cell door recently when he fainted, leading other
inmates to bang on their doors until guards came. A guard woke him up but did
not provide any treatment, the relative said.
After the October 3 visit, al-Haddad fainted
again after returning to his cell, his family later learned. The doctor
assigned to Scorpion came to al-Haddad’s cell, examined him and found that his
blood pressure was very low, so the authorities transferred him to Tora Liman
Prison Hospital. There, doctors administered blood tests that showed a
hemoglobin count of 7 grams per deciliter, dangerously below the normal amount,
his relative said.
At the time, the authorities did not tell
al-Haddad’s family anything about his condition or transfer to the prison
hospital. When the family visited him 13 days later, al-Haddad told them that
he was held in a detention room attached to the hospital with many other prisoners
but only two beds, and that he was sleeping on the floor, his relative said. He
told his family he would rather be held in Scorpion than in the prison
hospital.
After this incident, and for the first time
since al-Haddad was sent to Scorpion, authorities allowed his family to send
him large amounts of vitamins and iron and calcium supplements, his relative
said. After a month, the authorities returned al-Haddad to his cell in Scorpion
without providing further treatment, though they have continued to allow the
family to provide the vitamins and supplements.[107]
While in Scorpion, Gehad’s father, Essam
al-Haddad, has developed hemorrhoids, heartburn, and chronic vasitis, an
inflammation of the vas deferens. When he first complained of swelling and
pain, his relative said, the prison doctor diagnosed it as an inguinal hernia.
Al-Haddad asked for an exam by a surgical specialist, but authorities denied
his request for three months. He asked his family to file complaints and bring
him a truss, his relative said, but because he had lost significant weight, they
needed a waist measurement. The prison refused to take the measurement, she
said.[108]
After three months, a specialist examined
al-Haddad in a prison clinic and diagnosed his condition as vasitis. Al-Haddad
asked his family to deliver him the antiobiotic Zithromax, and after he
finished it, his swelling and pain went away. Al-Haddad has requested further
tests, such as an ultrasound, to determine whether there is a tumor, but the
authorities have so far refused, his relative said.[109]
“What I know is there is a medical file for
every person in the prison, but we never got a hold of them. You have to submit
a request to the Prisons Authority to get a copy, but usually people don’t get
a copy, so we didn’t even try,” she said.
Prison doctors have recommended that
al-Haddad, who suffers from osteoarthritis, also be given a chair, a hot water
pack, and a pressure brace for his knee, but prison authorities have not
allowed the family to deliver them, his relative said.[110]
According to those interviewed by Human Rights
Watch, six Scorpion prisoners died between May and October 2015, a period
that overlapped with the roughly five-month ban on all visits, essentially
cutting off Scorpion from the outside world. Those who died were:
- Farid
Ismail, a former member of parliament for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom
and Justice Party
- Essam
Derbala, the president of the Islamic Group’s Shura Council
- Nabil
al-Maghraby, a former intelligence officer accused in President Anwar
al-Sadat’s assassination
- Emad
Hassan, a Muslim Brotherhood member
- Morgan
Salem
- Mohamed
al-Said
A seventh inmate, Ramadan Gomaa, who had
cancer, died in custody in July 2016, according to a Scorpion families group.[111]
Relatives and lawyers of three of the inmates
who died in 2015 told Human Rights Watch that the authorities had refused to
consider conditionally releasing the inmates on medical grounds, prevented them
from receiving timely treatment, and failed to investigate their deaths.[112] A
fourth relative declined to speak with Human Rights Watch.
The failure to investigate these deaths
violates international human rights law, which requires authorities to perform
inquiries in cases of deaths in detention and make the findings available upon
request, so long as doing so would not jeopardize an ongoing criminal
investigation.[113]
The authorities have not responded to a letter
from Human Rights Watch requesting information about these investigations.
Under international best practices, if
established investigative procedures are inadequate because of a lack of
impartiality, or if the family of the victim complains about impartiality,
state authorities should pursue investigations through an independent
commission whose members are chosen for recognized impartiality, competence and
independence.[114]Egyptian
authorities have not done so in the cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch.
The Death of Essam Derbala
Essam Derbala, the president of the Islamic
Group’s Shura Council, was imprisoned for more than two decades after being
arrested in 1981 for his alleged involvement in the assassination of former
President Anwar al-Sadat. While in prison, in reaction to the killings carried
out by his organization, he and other founding members of the Islamic Group
brokered a landmark deal with the government and renounced violence in 1997,
publishing a series of texts called the “Initiative to Stop Violence” in 2002.[115]
In October 2006, the last remaining imprisoned
members of the Islamic Group, including Derbala, received pardons on Eid
al-Fitr from former President Hosni Mubarak. Nine years later, on May 11, 2015,
police rearrested Derbala for his role in the National Alliance to Support
Legitimacy, a political coalition that backed former President Morsy after his
removal by the military in July 2013. Derbala died on August 8, 2015, at age
58, while being held in pretrial detention in Scorpion.
The day after his arrest in 2015 in Qena, a
city in southern Egypt, National Security agents sent Derbala to Cairo,
according to a 29-page memo summarizing his case prepared by his brother Nagy
Derbala, a former vice president of the Cassation Court, Egypt’s highest
appellate court. Following two days of interrogation, National Security agents
accused Derbala of illegally founding and administering the Islamic Group and
of joining the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, according to the memo,
which Human Rights Watch reviewed.[116] The
Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered Derbala detained 15 days pending
investigation and continually renewed his pretrial detention until his death.
Nagy Derbala’s memo stated that he believed
his brother’s arrest and detention stemmed solely from his support for the
National Alliance to Support Legitimacy.[117] He
recounted several meetings he held with high-ranking Interior Ministry
officials, one of them with former Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim in
February 2014, after he found out that National Security agents had been
investigating both him and his brother. During these meetings, he recounted in
the memo, the officials told him that their main demand was for Essam Derbala
to break off his support for the coalition.
Interior Ministry authorities refused to provide Essam Derbala,
a senior Islamic Group official, with his diabetes medicine despite orders from
a judge and prosecutor to do so. Derbala died hours after a court hearing at
which he appeared semi-conscious and unable to control his urination. ©
2016 الجماعة الاسلامية
Following his
interrogation in May 2015, Essam Derbala informed the investigating prosecutor
that he suffered from diabetes and had difficulty breathing due to a
respiratory illness, and that he took prescribed medicine for his diabetes and
sometimes needed an inhaler to help him breath when he suffered respiratory
crises, the memo stated.[118]
The authorities nevertheless transferred
Derbala to Scorpion and placed him in what his brother said was a poorly
ventilated solitary cell that measured around 2.5 by 2 meters (8 by 6.5 feet),
had one window high in the rear wall, and grew extremely hot in the summer
weather, when outside temperatures reached highs of 40 degrees Celsius (104
degrees Fahrenheit), and temperatures inside the cells even higher. The
authorities only allowed Derbala to leave his cell for regular detention
renewal hearings, denying him the daily exercise hours guaranteed by law, the
memo said.[119]
Prison authorities allowed Derbala’s family
only one 10-minute visit during his roughly three months in prison, the memo
said. During the visit, his family brought dry and cooked food and prescription
medicine, but authorities told them that prison regulations allowed only one
meal to be delivered per day, and they refused to accept the medicine, saying
that only the prison’s health administration could deal with it.
When the family attempted to visit on another
occasion, having obtained permission from the Supreme State Security
Prosecution, Scorpion officials made them wait for around 12 hours before
telling them that they would not be allowed to visit. The officials refused to
accept the food or medicine brought by the family.[120]
On June 21, 2015, Nagy Derbala saw his brother
for the last time during a detention renewal hearing at the Supreme State
Security Prosecution. When he told his brother that he looked pale and skinny,
Essam Derbala responded that it was the result of his
fasting - Ramadan had begun four days earlier - as well as
poor prison conditions, including a lack of food, diabetes medicine, and
exercise. Derbala said that his cell was extremely hot, poorly ventilated, and
that his meals consisted of a portion of rice roughly the size of a coffee cup
along with some vegetables and bread.[121]
When Nagy Derbala complained to the prosecutor
in charge of the case that his brother was not receiving his prescribed dose of
diabetes medicine, the prosecutor expressed displeasure and said he had ordered
prison officials on June 8 to accept the family’s deliveries and would issue a
new written order to that effect. He also took delivery of medicine from Nagy
Derbala, who wrote in the memo that this was the final delivery the authorities
allowed. Because of the existing visit ban imposed by the Interior Ministry,
Derbala’s family was not allowed to visit him again.[122]
“He was sick and his [health] was
deteriorating,” Adel Moawed, Derbala’s lawyer, told Human Rights Watch. “We
submitted many requests to deliver medicine to him. They always refused to let
us deliver medicine to him.”[123]
On August 5, 2015, a lawyer who had managed to
visit Derbala in Scorpion told Nagy Derbala that his brother was in very poor
health and had experienced two diabetic comas in the past week. The lawyer said
that other detainees had made a commotion inside their cells on one occasion
when they realized that Derbala was unconscious, but that prison officers had
responded slowly and not offered medical care or transferred Derbala to a
prison hospital.[124]
Essam Derbala’s prominence and long
relationship with the Egyptian security forces as an interlocutor with Islamist
movements and supporter of nonviolence allowed his family better access to the
authorities than other prisoners. On the morning of August 7, 2015, a relative
of Nagy Derbala called the office manager of Interior Minister Magdy Abd
al-Ghaffar to notify him of Essam Derbala’s condition and the critical need to
deliver medication and transfer him to a hospital. Later that day, the office
manager called back to say that the minister was aware of the situation.[125]
The following morning, on August 8, 2015, Nagy
Derbala said he went to the Interior Ministry’s headquarters near Cairo’s
Lazoghly Square and delivered a handwritten memo to an officer stationed at the
main gate reiterating his brother’s deteriorating health condition and need for
a hospital transfer. The officer told him that he had been instructed to take
the memo and deliver it to the minister’s office, and Nagy Derbala later
received confirmation that his memo had been delivered.[126]
The same day, Nagy Derbala’s relative again
called him to say that he had telephoned Major General Hassan al-Sohagi, the
assistant interior minister for prisons, to tell him about Essam Derbala’s
health condition. The relative said that al-Sohagi put the call on speakerphone
as he called Scorpion authorities to check on Derbala’s condition and promised
to follow up personally.[127]
Nagy Derbala told Human Rights Watch he was
unaware of any intervention by the authorities. Later that day, prison officers
transferred Derbala to the Police Academy on the outskirts of Cairo for a
detention renewal hearing before Judge Essam Abu al-Ela of the Cairo criminal
court.[128]
Inside the prison transfer van were four other
prisoners. One of them, a doctor, later told Derbala’s brother that Derbala was
too exhausted to stand or sit inside the van. He said Derbala lay on the floor
of the van during the transfer and urinated on himself. Once the authorities
transferred Derbala and the other prisoners to a holding cell inside the
courtroom, Derbala urinated another four or five times, seemed to occasionally
lose consciousness, and shook uncontrollably, the other prisoner said.[129]
Moawed and another lawyer
working for Derbala attempted to speak to Derbala through the soundproof walls
of the cell, but police stopped them, Nagy Derbala wrote in his memo. Moawed
said they asked Judge Abu al-Ela to call Derbala out of his cell for an examination
or order his transfer to a hospital, but the judge refused.[130]
Judge Abu al-Ela agreed to order Interior
Ministry authorities to deliver medicine to Derbala, but when the lawyers gave
the medicine to the Scorpion official in charge of transporting inmates, he did
not give it to Derbala immediately, but rather turned the medicine over to
another Scorpion officer after returning the inmates to prison.[131]
According to the inmate with Derbala in the
prison van, the Scorpion officer who received the medicine at the prison refused
to give it directly to Derbala, or give him a dose of it, until it had been
presented to the prison doctor. Meanwhile, prison guards transferred Derbala
immediately back to his cell, despite his severely deteriorating condition.
After seeing how he looked, prisoners in adjacent cells began to bang on their
doors to attract attention. Eventually, the guards returned, opened the door to
Derbala’s cell, and found him unconscious.[132]
They called another officer, and around thirty
minutes later, a nurse arrived with a gurney, according to Nagy Derbala’s memo.
A Scorpion officer who was present told one of Derbala’s lawyers that when he
arrived to Derbala’s ward, Derbala looked like he was in his “last moments.”
Derbala could not concentrate and was speaking incoherently, saying the names
of people who were not present, the officer said, according to the memo. The
attending nurse said that it took them 30 minutes to transfer Derbala to the
nearby Liman Tora Prison Hospital because the ambulance, usually kept at the
prison’s gate, did not come. Derbala stayed in the hospital for 15 minutes and
then bled from his mouth and nose for about one minute and died, the nurse
said.[133]
A prison doctor who wrote Derbala’s death
certificate said that he had chronic high blood pressure and once had a stroke.
In his memo, Nagy Derbala denied these claims. The doctor also claimed in his
report that he had hurried to examine Derbala and had ordered Derbala
transferred to al-Manial University Hospital urgently, but that Derbala bled
and died before the ambulance was ready. Nagy Derbala said that the attending
nurse told him that the doctor came only after Derbala died.[134]
After Derbala’s death, prosecutors questioned
Derbala’s younger brother, who asked them not to perform an autopsy in order to
preserve the dignity of the body. But the family insisted that the death was
due to severe negligence, Nagy Derbala said.[135] They
have not seen any result from the prosecutors’ investigation, despite the
existence of prison logs showing that the authorities first allowed Derbala to receive
medicine a month after he was arrested.[136]
The Death of Emad Hassan
Emad Hassan, a leading Muslim Brotherhood
figure, was arrested in August 2014 as part of a police sweep that followed the
posting of a video on YouTube in which a group of masked armed men who
announced themselves as the “Helwan Brigades” and threatened to attack the
police and army. He died in Qasr al-Aini Hospital on September 26, 2015, at age
41, after being held in Scorpion.
Emad Hassan, a Muslim Brotherhood member, was diagnosed
with cancer in January 2015, but authorities didn't inform his family until
sending him to a hospital six months later, his wife said. They required
onerous permissions for simple tasks, like changing floors in a hospital.
© 2016 Emad
Hassan’s Family
Following his arrest in 2014, Hassan
disappeared for around three weeks, his wife, Eman Ammar, told Human Rights
Watch. Like many political detainees, he had been forcibly disappeared in the
custody of National Security officers, he told her during their first visit,
which occurred in Scorpion in September 2014.[137]
Scorpion authorities allowed Hassan’s wife to
visit once a month between September and December 2014 and every 15 days from
January to March 2015, but then implemented their blanket ban on visits until
June 2015. Each visit lasted for around three to seven minutes, she told Human
Rights Watch.[138]
In January 2015, Ammar arrived for a visit to
find that Hassan was not there. The authorities told her that they had transferred
him to Tora Liman Prison Hospital. Three weeks later, an officer called to say
he had been sent back to Scorpion. When she visited him again, he said that he
had fainted and undergone an echocardiogram in the prison hospital.[139]
During the visit ban that began in March 2015,
other inmates who appeared at court hearings told lawyers to check on Hassan,
who they said had begun vomiting blood.
Ammar tried to visit him in Scorpion many
times, she said, but prison authorities either refused to allow her to visit or
recorded her visit as having occurred without actually letting her enter. When
she and other visitors objected to this treatment, the officers threatened them
with arrest. On one occasion, authorities allowed Hassan’s lawyer to visit, and
he told Ammar that Hassan had lost significant weight and complained of stomach
pain.[140]
She was allowed to visit him again in June
2015, after the authorities transferred him to Qasr al-Aini Hospital. He looked
emaciated, she said.
“His appearance for the kids was shocking because
it was the first time [since his arrest] that they were allowed to touch and
hug him,” Ammar told Human Rights Watch.[141]
At the hospital, the Interior Ministry officer
in charge of guarding prisoners told her, for the first time, that he had been
diagnosed with cancer and that it was terminal. But the authorities refused to
allow her to obtain medical documents, she said. On a later occasion, the
officer told her that the tests conducted six months earlier in Tora Liman
Prison Hospital had revealed his cancer. The authorities had never informed
her, she said.[142]
Ammar visited him four times while he was held
in Qasr al-Aini Hospital. Each time, she was required to obtain permission from
the Supreme State Security Prosecution, and visits lasted for only several
minutes.
Interior Ministry restrictions interfered with
Hassan’s medical treatment in the hospital, she said. On one occasion, when
doctors needed to transfer Hassan to the intensive care unit to insert a
central venous catheter - a normal transfer in Egyptian hospitals, where sometimes
only the intensive care unit has the necessary equipment - security
officers said that he needed to obtain an order from the Interior Ministry to
move between floors.
“This police officer came and swore he
wouldn’t allow Emad to get transferred as long as we were in the hospital and
that it wasn’t our right to be in the hospital,” Ammar said. “And then he swore
that even when we left he wouldn’t allow him to be transferred that day.”[143]
On another occasion, officers told doctors
that Hassan needed an Interior Ministry order before he could receive an
endoscopy. When the results of the endoscopy turned out to be unusable, Hassan
was forced to wait two weeks before receiving another.
Medical forms eventually obtained by the
family and reviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that on August 22, 2015,
endoscopy results showed that Hassan’s stomach was “markedly dilated,” that the
opening between his stomach and duodenum was “markedly deformed,” and that the
endoscopy scope could not pass into his small intestine because of a “suspected
duodenal mass.”[144]
Ammar said that the family filed multiple
requests to the public prosecution and a letter to President al-Sisi asking for
Hassan to be moved to a private hospital to receive better care but received no
response.[145]
Hassan’s final diagnosis, Ammar said, was
stomach cancer, fibrosis in the duodenum and metastasis in the lungs and
elsewhere in his body. His autopsy, the results of which were obtained by the
family, confirmed that he had been suffering from stage four cancer. Hassan’s
brother told Human Rights Watch that he filed a police report complaining about
the lack of timely medical care and was questioned by prosecutors, but that the
authorities took no further action.[146]
The Death of Nabil al-Maghraby
Nabil al-Maghraby, an alleged former member of
al-Jihad imprisoned since 1979 and accused of helping to plan al-Sadat’s
assassination, was released in June 2011 on medical grounds by Prosecutor
General Abd al-Magid Mahmoud, at a time when Egypt was governed by the Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces. In October 2013, following Morsy’s ouster, the
authorities rearrested al-Maghraby and accused him of helping plan an
unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the interior minister the month before.
Alongside Mohamed al-Zawahiri, the brother of
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and 66 other defendants, al-Maghraby faced
charges of “starting and running a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda
that targeted state facilities, police and armed forces, as well as Coptic
[Christian] civilians.”[147] Al-Maghraby
died in Cairo’s Qasr al-Aini Hospital on June 2, 2015, nine days after being
moved there from Scorpion Prison, at around 70 years old.
Al-Maghraby suffered from diabetes and
hypertension, a family member told Human Rights Watch, and authorities never
considered his conditional release, despite his age.
After al-Maghraby’s arrest in 2013, Adel
Moawed, who served as al-Maghraby’s lawyer as well as Essam Derbala’s, began
submitting requests to have him examined by a medical committee. Later, for
several months before his death, al-Maghraby complained of stomach pain, his
relative said. A judge granted Moawed’s request for an examination only in late
May 2015, around two weeks before al-Maghraby died. The examination showed that
he had developed rectal cancer, the relative said. Al-Maghraby had never been
diagnosed with cancer before.[148]
After the examination, authorities first
transferred al-Maghraby to a hospital, then took him back to Scorpion, Moawed
said. The website VetoGate, which is sympathetic to the government, quoted an
anonymous Interior Ministry source on May 20, 2015 who said that the
authorities had returned al-Maghraby to prison after his condition improved.[149] But
the authorities then reversed themselves, sending him to Qasr al-Aini Hospital
after his condition worsened again, Moawed said.[150]
Al-Maghraby’s relative visited him twice in
the prisoners’ ward of Qasr al-Aini Hospital shortly before his death.
Al-Maghraby was suffering from severe stomach pain during those visits, he
said.[151]
Doctors performed a biopsy, but al-Maghraby
died on June 2, 2015. On June 3, the day after al-Maghraby’s death, the
relative visited the hospital to deliver clothes and was not told that
al-Maghraby had died. The next day, an Interior Ministry officer telephoned the
relative to inform him. The authorities refused to provide him with any medical
reports, including the results of al-Maghraby’s autopsy.[152]
Before the authorities agreed to release
al-Maghraby’s body and provide a burial permission form, prosecutors summoned
the relative for questioning.
“They asked me if I [would] accuse anyone of
medical negligence or lack of care, but I said no of course, because I wanted
to get the burial permission,” the relative told Human Rights Watch.[153]
The Death of Farid Ismail
Farid Ismail, a 57-year-old former member of
parliament for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, died on May
13, 2015, around a week after falling into a hepatic coma in his cell in
Scorpion Prison. Interior Ministry authorities did not keep Ismail’s family
informed about his condition and delayed their response to complaints about his
health by fellow inmates.[154]
Four days before Ismail’s death, his son wrote
in a post on Facebook that he had learned from someone else, not the prison,
that his father, who suffered from diabetes and Hepatitis C, had entered a coma
four days earlier.[155]
After finding an unconscious Ismail in his
cell, Scorpion authorities transferred him to a prison hospital in Zagazig, a
city 50 miles northeast of Cairo, without telling his family, whom they had
banned from visits for more than a month, his son wrote.[156]
Aisha al-Shater, a daughter of Scorpion inmate
and Muslim Brotherhood deputy supreme guide Khairat al-Shater, told Human
Rights Watch what her father told her about the incident:
During the period when Farid Ismail died, each
one of them was not allowed to leave his cell. So in order for them to check on
each other, they agreed that each day each one would knock on their cell or
shout in a loud voice, so that they would know every day that they’re OK.
On the day of Dr. Farid Ismail’s death, he
didn’t reply. There’s a slit in the cell door, it’s quite high, and they
sometimes assume the person didn’t hear, the person is sleeping, or the person
is praying. They noticed at night that he didn’t reply at all. They kept knocking
on their door to say that one of us isn’t answering. [The guards] told them,
“It’s none of your business.” The next day, they agreed that they were all
going to knock very loudly, because they agreed that he’s in danger.
At that time, they realized that he had been
unconscious or in a coma since the day before. Afterward, even calling to each
other is prohibited … So right now, they say, “We are in tombs. We’re living,
but we are in tombs.”[157]
Scorpion authorities have used physical abuse,
“discipline” cells, and other forms of humiliation to punish inmates, according
to relatives.
Five people said their relatives, in addition
to other inmates in Scorpion, had been sent to cells in a “discipline wing” of
Scorpion, and another said they had heard of the use of such cells.[158] These
cells, which are smaller than others, have no running water, no electricity and
no toilet. Inmates in discipline cells receive even less food than other
inmates and are not allowed out for any exercise.[159]
Essam al-Haddad, who was once kept in a
discipline cell for three days, told a relative that he received half a loaf of
bread each day.[160] Aisha
al-Shater told Human Rights Watch that Scorpion authorities kept her
brother-in-law in a discipline cell for nearly a month during Ramadan in 2015.
“There’s more psychological torture than
physical,” she said.
According to her brother-in-law, the cell was
usually dark, due to the lack of a lightbulb, and roughly the size of a man’s
body, not wide or long enough for him lie down fully outstretched. Guards gave
him half a loaf of bread to eat each day. Before sunset prayer each evening,
they took him from the cell to beat him and returned him before dawn. He lost
around 15 kilograms (33 pounds) during his time in the cell, she said.[161]
In December 2015, she said, guards came to
take her father to a discipline cell, but he was weak from malnutrition and
passed out, so instead they took a prisoner named Ayman Hodhod, an aide to
former president Morsy.
“Every month or two months the police officers
have to sacrifice one of the prisoners and take them to discipline, so they can
say they are doing a good job,” she said.[162]
During some cell inspections, officers have
used trained dogs, pulled inmates from their cells by force, and ordered them
to strip to their underwear and kneel to the floor while being photographed,
Aisha al-Shater told Human Rights Watch.[163] They
have also made inmates, including her father, the Muslim Brotherhood deputy
supreme guide, lie on their backs while they “stomp” on their stomachs. On one
occasion, she said, they told her brother, Saad, to tell his father to halt
protests in the streets.
“I don’t think the intention is to beat them
as much as to humiliate them,” she said.[164]
During a court hearing on August 9, 2016,
Mohamed al-Beltagy, a high-ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood and former
member of parliament for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party,
said that Major General Hassan al-Sohagi, the assistant interior minister for
prisons, and Major General Mohamed Ali, the newly appointed chief of
investigations for the Prisons Authority, had led a team of officers in a raid
of all the cells in his wing of Scorpion three days earlier. Al-Beltagy said
that the authorities had made three such raids before that.[165]
Mohamed al-Beltagy, a Muslim Brotherhood official
and leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, told a judge that he had been
forced to strip in front of high-ranking Interior Ministry officials, who were
filming him, as punishment for filing a complaint against President
al-Sisi. © 2016 شبكة مباشر مصر
During the August 6 raid, al-Beltagy said he
was removed from his cell and handcuffed. Major General Ali, who was filming
with a camera, ordered him to face the wall and raise his arms and then squat.
He insulted al-Beltagy’s religion and mother while al-Sohagi ordered al-Beltagy
to change his prison clothes, leaving him partially nude as Ali filmed,
al-Beltagy said. He said that the treatment “was an attempt to break my will”
and force him to withdraw a complaint against al-Sisi accusing the president of
responsibility - during the time al-Sisi was defense minister - for
the death of al-Beltagy’s daughter, who was shot and killed on August 14, 2013,
when security forces dispersed a mass sit-in in Cairo’s Rab’a al-Adawiya Square
protesting Morsy’s removal.[166]
In a note on a napkin purportedly handwritten
by al-Beltagy, smuggled out of Scorpion and provided to Human Rights Watch by a
lawyer, al-Beltagy restated what he had alleged in court and asked his
supporters and lawyers to follow up in case he is banned from further hearings,
and to request that he be allowed to receive visits from lawyers in prison.[167]
The poor conditions in Scorpion led some
detainees to begin a hunger strike in February 2016, and by the following
month, at least 57 inmates had joined, according to one of their relatives.[168] Government
authorities responded by threatening some of the hunger-striking inmates with
violence, and security forces in the prison beat others. Only a few prisoners
remained on hunger strike as of August 2016.[169]
Abdullah al-Shamy, a television correspondent
for Al Jazeera who spent the final month of his roughly year-long imprisonment
in Scorpion, undertook a hunger strike that lasted for six months until his
release in June 2014. He told Human Rights Watch that officers at Scorpion
twice tried to end his strike by force-feeding him and during one of these
attempts sedated him without his consent. Force-feeding is inhuman and
degrading treatment and could amount to torture. It violates the right to
health and the right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.[170]
One prisoner who undertook a hunger strike and
was beaten in 2016 was Khalil al-Aqeed, the 25-year-old former bodyguard to
deputy supreme guide Khairat al-Shater. A relative of al-Aqeed told Human
Rights Watch that he suffers from chronic headaches that sometimes cause him to
lose consciousness, and that an independent doctor consulted by the family
during al-Aqeed’s detention said he likely suffers from epilepsy.[171] Al-Aqeed’s
brother Bilal told Human Rights Watch that al-Aqeed had been shot in the head
by police shotgun pellets during the 2011 uprising and that he sometimes hits
his head against his cell wall when his headaches begin.[172]
Al-Aqeed was convicted before Morsy’s removal
for possessing a firearm without a license and completed a one-year sentence in
2013, but after the military overthrew Morsy, prosecutors charged him in a new
case alongside 35 others, alleging collaboration between the Muslim Brotherhood
and Hamas, the armed Palestinian movement that governs the Gaza Strip.[173] He
was transferred to Scorpion Prison in December 2013 and received a life
sentence in June 2015 that he is currently appealing.
In early 2015, a guard beat al-Aqeed when he
called to be let out of his cell, causing an injury to al-Aqeed’s shoulder that
required stitches, his brother told Human Rights Watch. The prison warden
investigated the incident and exonerated the officer, his brother said.[174]
In March 2016, al-Aqeed began a hunger strike
to protest his treatment, which in addition to the beating included being
locked in his cell for several months at a time without exercise and living
with extreme heat and poor air circulation in the summer, which caused rashes
on his skin, his brother said.[175]
“He went on strike so he would be moved to a
prison other than Scorpion,” his other relative said. “He didn’t want to get
out of prison. He wanted to go to another prison to be treated like in other
prisons.”[176]
In an attempt to force him to break his
strike, the authorities confined him to his cell, denied him medicine for his
chronic headaches and closed the slot in his door that allows inmates to
communicate with guards and one other. On March 16, after al-Aqeed refused to
break his strike, the prison’s former chief of investigations, Ahmed al-Banna,
and his deputy, Mohamed Fawzy, came to al-Aqeed’s cell with a “riot control
squad,” beat him severely, and moved him to a “discipline cell,” his relatives
told Human Rights Watch.[177]
Later, prison authorities transferred al-Aqeed
to Tora Liman Prison Hospital, where his family visited him on March 20, 2016.
His brother and the other relative said that on the day of the visit, guards
brought al-Aqeed out in a wheelchair. His face was bruised and his head wrapped
in medical gauze, and he could not speak intelligibly. His relative told Human
Rights Watch that he was wearing dirty clothes, his lips appeared dehydrated
and he smelled as if he had not bathed.[178]
“I would describe it as if someone was thrown
in the desert and was brought back after 100 days,” his relative said. “I
started yelling and screaming asking for the warden, demanding to know what
they had done to him.”[179]
She was taken to meet the warden and asked him
to give the family al-Aqeed’s medical file. The warden refused, she said,
telling them, “I do not deal with regular people. Get me an order from the
prosecution, and I will give you whatever you want.” Ten days later, when the
family returned to the hospital, al-Aqeed was able to tell them about the
beating.[180]
Later, on April 13, when his mother came to
Scorpion Prison for a visit, al-Aqeed told her that the authorities had given
him tramadol, a widely used pain killer in Egypt, and injections of an unknown
substance that makes him fatigued for several days, his relative said.
“When I asked around about this treatment,
everyone advised me that he shouldn’t take any strange medication,” she said.
“So I told [him] not to take any medication he didn’t have enough information
about, but [he] told me that they were forcing him to take them and he doesn’t
know the type or name of the medication.”[181]
Under international human rights law, any
medical intervention, including the administration of medications, requires
informed consent. Administration without informed consent violates the right to
health.
Prison authorities have denied the families’
recent attempts to deliver medication for his chronic headaches, his
relative said. The family filed a complaint with prosecutors against the two
officers who beat him and, based on advice from the independent doctor, a
request to transfer him to an outside hospital.[182]
In July 2016, the authorities moved al-Aqeed
to Tora Liman Prison Hospital again after he apparently experienced a seizure
resulting in cuts to a leg and arm that required stiches. As of August, he
remained in the hospital. Though the family has recently been allowed to visit
him every 15 days, the authorities prevent them from delivering medicine
prescribed by the outside doctor they have consulted, refuse to provide them
with any medical documents, and continue to administer sedatives to al-Aqeed
without informing the family or al-Aqeed what they are.[183]
Scorpion officers interfered with the
treatment of Hisham al-Mahdy, the 42-year old pharmacist accused of ISIS
membership, by arbitrarily seizing portions of his diabetes medicine and
contravening doctors’ recommendations to keep him in an outside hospital, his
wife said. They may also have sedated him without his informed consent.[184]
Police arrested al-Mahdy on December 29, 2013,
from his pharmacy in Ismailia, a city on the Suez Canal, and detained him at
Azouli Prison, an unofficial detention site inside al-Galaa army base in the
city, his wife told Human Rights Watch.[185] National
Security officers stripped him of his clothes, hung him in stress positions,
and electrocuted, beat, and flogged him during interrogations.[186] They
accused him of membership in Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an armed jihadist group that
later pledged allegiance to ISIS in November 2014. They said he had helped them
try to blow up the Ismailia Security Directorate and to sabotage government
buildings and a ship passing through the Suez Canal.[187]
In February 2014, authorities transferred him
to Scorpion. Around two months later, he fainted while performing his dawn
prayer in his cell. After examining him, a prison doctor told him that he had diabetes,
though al-Mahdy had never been diagnosed before, his wife said.[188]
In late February 2016, al-Mahdy began a hunger
strike to protest conditions in the prison, including the long visit bans.
During a March 16 court session, he fainted again. Authorities transferred him
to Tora Liman Prison Hospital, where Interior Ministry officers, including
Major General Hassan al-Sohagi, offered to improve his conditions if he ended
his strike, his wife said.[189]
Al-Mahdy agreed, and the authorities held him
for three weeks in a ward of Tora Liman Prison that his wife said was reserved
for political prisoners. They allowed his wife to come every week. Then,
without explanation, they transferred him back to Scorpion in the first week of
April, and al-Mahdy resumed his strike.[190]
In retaliation, Scorpion authorities seized
his diabetes medicine, his wife said. Days later, on April 9, he fainted in his
cell again, and the authorities transferred him to the intensive care unit in
Qasr al-Aini Hospital. Al-Mahdy’s wife only learned of the transfer the
following day from relatives and lawyers of other inmates. When she came to the
hospital, she found her husband unconscious and his clothes stained with blood,
which doctors said he had vomited. His wife said she saw what looked like black
burn marks on his feet and peeling, longitudinal marks on his back.[191] A
photograph viewed by Human Rights Watch showed a dark line, perhaps bruising or
scabbing, that appeared to run around the entirety of his right ankle.[192]
Doctors said they believed that he was
suffering from an adverse reaction to heavy sedation. Al-Mahdy’s toxicology
reports, seen by Human Rights Watch, stated that he probably had been given a
benzodiazepine, a class of tranquillizers, and should be observed for 24 hours.[193]
By April 12, al-Mahdy began to speak again but
said he did not remember what had happened.
Interior Ministry officers told Qasr al-Aini
Hospital doctors that they wanted to transfer al-Mahdy back to Scorpion Prison
immediately, but the doctors refused. After a negotiation, the officers allowed
the doctors to move him to the prisoners’ ward on the hospital’s seventh floor,
where they kept al-Mahdy until April 30, when al-Mahdy had a court session.[194]
In court, al-Mahdy’s lawyers told the judge
about his medical condition, and the judge asked him to speak, but he appeared
sluggish and repeatedly said that he could not remember what had happened to
him, his wife said. His lawyer, Khaled al-Masry, asked for him to be examined
by a specialist from the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medical Authority, but the
judge ordered him to be examined by a prison doctor instead.[195]
Though the doctors in Qasr al-Aini Hospital
had told Interior Ministry officers to return al-Mahdy to the hospital after
the court session, the officers took him back to Scorpion Prison instead, his
wife said.[196]
Al-Masry, the lawyer, requested that
prosecutors investigate, but they have not responded. Al-Mahdy’s wife
filed a complaint with the National Council for Human Rights in late April, and
the council said it would follow up, she said.[197]
Both Essam and Gehad al-Haddad began hunger
strikes in February 2016 to protest their conditions. In response, Major
General al-Sohagi threatened to move them to a prison in New Valley
governorate, far south of Cairo, one of their relatives said.[198]
Essam al-Haddad told his relative that
al-Sohagi said: “I have carte blanche to deal with the hunger strike, whatever
it takes, starting from humiliating your families, and it may even be just
killing you.” Al-Sohagi also threatened to reinstate the visit ban of 2015,
including the ban on medicine deliveries.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said, according
to al-Haddad’s relative.[199]
When Human Rights Watch interviewed her on May
10, 2016, al-Haddad’s relative said that visits had been banned since April 21,
leaving the family unable to supply Essam or Gehad al-Haddad with food or
medication. Other prisoners said that the cafeteria had halted sales of milk
and juice, which some of the hunger strikers drink, in an attempt to force them
to end their strikes.[200]
In February, Abdullah Karam, the 20-year-old
student accused in the “Helwan Brigades” case, went on hunger strike to protest
the lack of care for his hemorrhoids and possible pleural effusion. The
authorities threatened to arrest his mother, Karam’s relative told Human Rights
Watch. After about 20 days, when the prison began allowing visits again, he
stopped his strike. His relative said that she has submitted complaints to the
prosecutor general’s office, which says it is investigating, but that the
Prisons Authority has yet to allow further treatment.[201]
Abdullah al-Shamy, the Jazeera correspondent,
was detained in Egypt from August 14, 2013, when an army officer arrested him
as he covered the dispersal of the Rab`a al-Adawiya Square sit-in, until June
17, 2014. He faced allegations of spreading false news and membership in the
Muslim Brotherhood and spent the final six months of his detention on hunger
strike. Authorities held him for the last month in Scorpion Prison.[202]
Al-Shamy did not receive any medical treatment
after beginning his hunger strike on January 21, 2014, he told Human Rights
Watch. High-ranking Interior Ministry authorities, whom he believed had not
been told that he was on strike, took no action until May 7, when Major General
al-Sohagi visited al-Shamy in Tora Reception Prison. Al-Shamy told Human Rights
Watch that al-Sohagi tried to convince him to halt his strike.
“Consider me your father,” he said. “Your country
needs you.”[203]
Al-Sohagi asked al-Shamy to name successful
hunger strikers. Al-Shamy mentioned Nelson Mandela, the former president of
South Africa, and the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.
“He said, ‘Those are not Muslims. We are
Muslims,’” al-Shamy recalled.[204]
Al-Sohagi told the Tora Reception warden to
take al-Shamy to the hospital for a medical check, but the warden never did,
al-Shamy said.
Five days later, the authorities moved
al-Shamy to Scorpion Prison and attempted to force-feed him. Two men held al-Shamy
while a third tried to stuff a piece of tuna into his mouth, he said.[205]
Later that day, the Scorpion warden visited
his cell and told him: “Look, I’m going to be serious with you. Either you cut
your hunger strike or you will stay here for as long as it takes.”[206]
Prison authorities tried to force al-Shamy to
break his strike a second time later in May. On May 21, 2014, photos appeared
on an unofficial pro-government Facebook page called “Egypt Military Pictures”
showing al-Shamy, in a white prison t-shirt and pants, eating food and drinking
milk. The Facebook post, since removed, claimed that al-Shamy had been faking
his hunger strike.[207]
Al-Shamy said he had no recollection of the
meal and that he found out about the incident only when his family visited and
told him. He said that he believed prison authorities drugged him through the
water they were supplying and then gave him the food. In the days after the
incident, he vomited and felt regular aches in his head and stomach but
continued his hunger strike.[208]
The authorities prevented al-Shamy from
communicating with other prisoners and allowed him to leave his cell for only
30 minutes each day, with a security officer accompanying him wherever he
walked. In early June 2014, a committee of two judges and an assistant commissioned
by the Justice Ministry to look into prison conditions visited al-Shamy with a
prison doctor and asked the doctor to examine al-Shamy. Al-Shamy said he
believed the visit was intended only for the government’s use as “propaganda.”[209]
On June 11, 2014, six members of the National
Council for Human Rights visited al-Shamy and published a brief announcement
about the visit on their website.[210] The
council said that al-Shamy’s urine, pulse, blood pressure, and blood sugar were
normal and that he showed no signs of pallor and appeared to be in a “state of
extreme alertness.” They did not mention that the authorities had force-fed
him.
According to al-Shamy, the council members
were accompanied on their visit by the Scorpion warden and officers from the
prison and Interior Ministry.
“They
actually sat down with us when I was talking with the council officials. So it
was just like [it] didn’t really happen,” he said. “So it was mostly something
they tried to use to tell the world that we’re taking care of the man, which
was not happening.”[211]
By law,
Scorpion Prison, like all prisons in Egypt, falls under the control of the
Interior Ministry’s Prisons Authority Sector (Qata` Musalaha al-Sigoun).
In practice, however, the ministry’s National Security Agency – known as State
Security Investigations until it was renamed after the 2011 uprising –
maintains almost total control over decisions about access to the prison and
the treatment and movement of its inmates.
Though Egyptian law gives multiple agencies
power to inspect prisons, in practice, independent authorities rarely exercise
oversight. This is not a new problem. In its 1993 report on Egyptian prison
conditions, Human Rights Watch identified the Interior Ministry’s control over
prisons as a key factor underlying abuse:
As in
some other countries where the same agency deals with individuals both at the
police (investigative) stage and at the convictions (punitive) stage, custodial
confinement in Egypt is particularly abusive. That is, precisely because the
Ministry of Interior has systematically violated the human rights of security
detainees, it cannot be expected to safeguard the rights of inmates – security
and criminal alike – in thirty prisons throughout the country. The situation
merely is exacerbated by the weak – often nonexistent – oversight of the
prisons by the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor General's office, and by
the government's lack of receptivity to monitoring of the penal system on an
ongoing basis by Egyptian nongovernmental organizations.[212]
The Law on the Organization of Prisons, issued
by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in November 1956 and still in effect, though
amended many times, mandates that the Prisons Authority employ male and female
inspectors to monitor cleanliness, health, and security conditions. [213] None of the relatives interviewed by Human Rights Watch
mentioned the presence of such inspectors in Scorpion.
The Prisons Law gives governors the right to
inspect prisons in their jurisdiction at any time.[214] Scorpion
would fall under the authority of Major General Ahmed Taymour, the acting
governor of Cairo. Human Rights Watch was not aware of Taymour or his
predecessor, current Transportation Minister Galal Sayid, having made such a
visit to Scorpion.
Investigating judges, presidents of appeals
and first instance courts, and their representatives also have the right to
inspect prisons in their jurisdiction under the Prisons Law.[215] Human
Rights Watch was aware of only one case, that of Abdullah al-Shamy described
above, which involved an unusually high level of scrutiny from international
media, in which judges exercised this power and visited an inmate in Scorpion
Prison.
The public prosecution, headed by the
prosecutor general, holds by far the widest oversight role under the Prisons
Law, which grants prosecutors “the right to enter any place of imprisonment at
any time” in their jurisdiction in order to look into whether orders by
prosecutors and judges are being implemented and to ensure that no person is
being illegally imprisoned, in addition to several other responsibilities.
“In general, [prosecutors] shall ensure that
laws and regulations are followed and take the necessary steps in case
violations occur,” the law states. “They accept prisoners’ complaints and
examine judicial records and papers to investigate their compliance with
prescribed forms.”[216]
Though prosecutors have conducted
well-publicized visits to overcrowded police stations since 2013, Human Rights
Watch was not aware of any prosecutor visiting Scorpion Prison to perform the
oversight role described in the law. On August 12, 2016, Human Rights Watch
sent a letter to the Information Ministry, addressed to the Prosecutor
General’s Office, with detailed questions about Scorpion and prosecutorial
visits to detention facilities. At the time that Human Rights Watch was
preparing this report for publication in mid-September, there had been no response.
Prosecutors have on occasion ordered the
Prisons Authority to transfer inmates who need medical care to hospitals
outside the prison system or to allow relatives to deliver medicine, but
Interior Ministry authorities regularly ignore such orders, and prosecutors do
not enforce them or punish recalcitrant officials, according to relatives who
spoke with Human Rights Watch and the Coalition of Scorpion Inmates’ Families,
an advocacy and support group.[217]
Though some of the relatives interviewed by
Human Rights Watch said prosecutors occasionally accepted complaints about
mistreatment from prisoners’ lawyers during court hearings, none of them said
they knew of prosecutors investigating those complaints.
The government-funded National Council for
Human Rights also visits detention sites, but its powers are circumscribed. The
council has visited Scorpion Prison three times since Morsy’s removal – in June
2014, August 2015 and January 2016 – and has pushed for more access to
detention facilities, but it is not empowered to do so by law and must first
obtain permission from the public prosecution and Interior Ministry.
In June 2014, six members of the council
visited the Tora prison complex to meet with Mohamed Soltan, a US-Egyptian
citizen and activist who documented the authorities’ violent dispersal of mass
protests against Morsy’s removal in August 2013, as well as Abdullah al-Shamy.
The council issued a short statement following the visit, including one
paragraph that stated that al-Shamy was in good condition and listed some of
his medical details, such as his blood pressure and blood sugar.[218] The
council’s statement did not address any of the conditions in Scorpion.
The council made two more visits to Scorpion,
but families criticized those visits for failing to accurately document
conditions inside, and during the most recent visit, in January 2016,
authorities refused to admit one member of the council or to allow a second
member, a doctor, to inspect inmates who had made medical complaints.
In August 2015, a six-member delegation from
the council visited Scorpion Prison and met with Major General Hassan
al-Sohagi, the assistant interior minister for prisons, and representatives
from the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Sector. The delegation also met with
three prisoners, inspected what they said were authentic medical files and
visitation logs, and viewed parts of the prison’s premises, including its
hospital.[219] Since
Scorpion does not have a hospital, the delegation may have meant the Tora Liman
Prison Hospital.
In a six-page report published on August 26,
2015, the delegation recounted what it said were the major complaints it had
received from six inmates, most of them high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood
members, before discrediting the complaints with what the report described as
evidence obtained from the visit.[220]
According to the report, the prison’s logs
proved that families were making regular visits, cafeteria purchase records
showed that quality food was easily available, and the delegation’s inspection
of the prison hospital showed that it was equipped with an array of clinics.
Four days later, a coalition of Scorpion
inmates’ families issued a 14-page response to the council’s report, including
point-by-point criticisms of the council’s findings.[221]
The relatives stated that at least 70 families
had submitted complaints to the council, not six, and that the council had met
with only three prisoners from one wing, failing to address conditions in other
wings or among hundreds of other inmates. The families expressed astonishment
at the delegation’s apparent ignorance of a number of severe abuses.
“We consider it an attempt to export to the
public opinion that Scorpion Prison doesn’t contain anyone but leaders of the
Muslim Brotherhood, in order to justify persecution in the prison,” the
coalition wrote.[222]
The families argued that Scorpion authorities
regularly falsified visit records, recording the visits as having occurred
while in fact denying access to the families. They criticized the council for
making no mention of the deaths of several Scorpion inmates or others’ dramatic
weight loss. They said that meeting three prisoners in the presence of the
Scorpion warden exposed the prisoners to retribution.[223]
The relative of Scorpion inmate Samy Amin told
Human Rights Watch that the Prisons Authority had given some prisoners
mattresses and beds before the council’s visit and confiscated them afterward.
“I was there by coincidence on that day and
the visit was so organized, and they accepted all the food and medicine,” she
said. “It was [suddenly] like a five-star treatment.”[224]
The council made a third visit on January 5,
2016, but received little access. Prison authorities denied entry to council
member Ragia Omran, a lawyer, saying her name was not on the visitors list, and
refused to allow council member Salah Salem, a doctor, to meet with five
prisoners whose families had made medical complaints. Though four prisoners
attended a meeting with the delegation, the authorities refused to allow
council members to meet a number of other prisoners or to inspect Scorpion
cells.[225]
Under Law 94 of 2003 for the Establishment of
the National Council of Human Rights, the council enjoys few privileges. The
law tasks the council with vaguely defined duties that include monitoring
compliance with international conventions, issuing reports, and receiving human
rights complaints and referring them, as well as recommendations, to relevant
state authorities. It does not mention visits to detention facilities. The law
requires government agencies to assist the council and provide information “related
to its jurisdiction” but specifies no punishment for authorities who refuse.[226]
An amendment to the law proposed by a group of
parliamentarians in May 2016 would give the council more authority but still
not allow council members to conduct unannounced inspections. It would task the
council with surveying and visiting prisons and all other places of detention,
after obtaining prior written approval, “for the purpose of treatment or
rehabilitation or protection,” and give council members the right to meet
prisoners in private. It would also task the council with intervening in civil
lawsuits and filing its own legal challenges against “any procedure or decision
that would constrain or violate” human rights. It would give the council the
ability to inform the public prosecution about violations, which is allowed
under the Egyptian constitution but has never been written into law.[227]
The law would require state agencies to assist
the council and provide it with records and data “without delay” and would
punish with a minimum of three years in prison or dismissal from public office
anyone who withholds information, prevents a council member from performing
their duties, or obstructs the council’s work, including anyone who
intentionally damages documents requested by the council.[228]
Until such an amendment is passed, the
council’s ability to monitor and prevent human rights abuses will remain
limited.
“Unfortunately, the National Council for Human
Rights’ hands are tied when it comes to prison visits and inspection because
the law [regulating the] council is weak and needs to be amended to give more
powers to the council, including the right to inspect prisons without prior
notification,” Omran said in May 2016, according to media reports. “Without
this right, visits aren’t feasible, except on a very weak scale.”[229]
The International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and
the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment (CAT) all prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment or punishment, without exception or derogation. Article 10 of the
ICCPR mandates that "[a]ll persons deprived of their liberty shall be
treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human
person."[230]
Several other international documents flesh
out the human rights due to people who are deprived of their liberty and
provide guidance for governments. The most comprehensive are the United Nations
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the UN
Economic and Social Council in 1957 and updated and renamed the “Nelson Mandela
Rules” by the UN General Assembly in December 2015.[231]
The Mandela Rules, though not technically a
legally binding document like a treaty, fall under a category of jurisprudence
known as “customary international law,” which is defined as a general practice
that most states accept as law. Resolutions passed in the United Nations
General Assembly can be a clear illustration of the development of a specific
customary international law. Though they are not a treaty, they constitute an
authoritative guide to binding treaty standards. Individual states may be
“persistent objectors” to new rules of customary international law but need to
demonstrate clear and public objections to the rules. This would include
objecting to the agreement of new guidelines like the updated Mandela Rules.
Egypt did not attend the fourth and final
meeting of the UN’s expert group for revising the Standard Minimum Rules, held
in Cape Town, South Africa, in March 2015.[232] But
in May, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted the
expert group’s resolution by acclamation, and in December, the General Assembly
approved the resolution without a vote, implying unanimity.[233] Egypt
did not make any objections or propose any competing resolutions during the
drafting process.
Other relevant UN documents include the Body
of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or
Imprisonment and the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners.[234]
Prisoners have the right to the highest
attainable standard of physical and mental health guaranteed in the Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Egypt is a party.[235] Governments
have a unique responsibility to prisoners “owed by virtue of the custodial
relationship between the keepers and the kept,” and “states are under the
obligation to respect the right to health by, inter alia, refraining from
denying or limiting equal access for all persons, including prisoners or
detainees … to preventive, curative and palliative health services,” according
to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. [236]
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has
affirmed that the ICCPR requires governments to provide “adequate medical care
during detention.”[237] The
Committee Against Torture, the monitoring body of the CAT, has found that
failure to provide adequate medical care can violate that treaty’s prohibition
of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The Optional Protocol to the CAT, which
entered into force in 2006 following its adoption in the General Assembly, lays
out a system for international and national bodies to regularly inspect
detention sites in order to prevent torture and other abuse.[238] The
Optional Protocol mandates that states establish a “national preventive
mechanism,” such as a committee, to inspect detention sites, meet privately
with prisoners, and submit proposals and observations. It also established an
elected international subcommittee empowered to visit detention sites in
various countries and advise governments. Egypt has not ratified the Optional
Protocol.
The Mandela Rules, of which there are 112,
cover nearly every aspect of life in detention.
Rule 1, which lays out the overall purpose,
states the following (emphasis added):
All
prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and
value as human beings. No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all
prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever
may be invoked as a justification. The safety and security of prisoners, staff,
service providers and visitors shall be ensured at all times.[239]
The CAT defines torture as “any act by which
severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally
inflicted on a person,” with the consent of an official, as punishment,
intimidation or coercion, or in order to extract information.[240]
Human rights expert Manfred Nowak, a former
judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina and UN special
rapporteur on torture, has offered a definition for cruel and inhuman treatment
that is essentially the same as the UN definition of torture, but without the
need for the act to have been committed as punishment, intimidation, coercion
or interrogation.[241]
The confinement of Scorpion inmates for long
periods in small “discipline” cells without running water or electricity,
during which guards administer beatings and restrict food, as well as the
severe beatings, by prison officers, of Scorpion inmates for beginning hunger
strikes, or as intimidation or humiliation, qualified as cruel and inhuman
treatment and likely amounted to torture.
Egypt’s constitution forbids the torture,
intimidation, coercion, or harming of detainees.[242]It
states that “torture in all its forms and types” is a crime without a statute
of limitations.[243] The
penal code provides for a prison sentence of between three and ten years for
any public employee who commits torture and for the death penalty if the victim
dies as a result of the torture.[244]
The authorities’ interference in medical
treatment and force-feeding of hunger striking inmates also constituted cruel
and inhuman treatment and in the case of inmates who died in custody, might have
violated their right to life.
The apparent sedation of one hunger striking
inmate without his consent, after which he lost consciousness for more than a
day and vomited blood, and the refusal to allow inmates to undergo medical
treatment for illnesses such as Hepatitis C or pleural effusion or to receive
prescription medications from their families, likely amounted to cruel and
inhuman treatment.
The definition of degrading treatment, Nowak
wrote, consists simply of “pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, which
aims at humiliating the victim.”[245]
The refusal by Scorpion authorities to allow
delivery of outside food to supplement meager prison diets, causing several
prisoners to lose significant amounts of weight, or to provide prisoners with
basic daily necessities for comfort and hygiene- – including beds, mattresses,
soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and combs – -which has left inmates
unable to maintain their usual physical appearance and exacerbated afflictions
like skin rashes and infections, amounted to degrading treatment intended to
humiliate.
Human Rights Watch believes that conditions in
Scorpion Prison run counter to more than two dozen Mandela Rules, including the
following:
- Prisoners
should enjoy the same standards of health care that are available in the
community, without discrimination on the grounds of their legal status.
- Clinical
decisions may not be overruled or ignored by non-medical prison staff.
- A
physician shall have daily access to all sick prisoners and all prisoners
who complain about physical or mental health.
- Health
care services should be organized in a way that ensures continuity of
treatment and care.
- Prisons
shall ensure prompt access to medical attention in urgent cases and
specialized treatment or surgery in specialized institutions or civil
hospitals.
- Restrictive
measures shall not include the prohibition of family contact.
- Prisoners
shall be allowed to communicate with their family and friends at regular
intervals, including through visits and writing.
- Prisoners
shall be provided with adequate opportunity, time, and facilities to be
visited by a legal adviser in full confidentiality.
- Every
prisoner shall be provided with food of nutritional value adequate for
health and strength, of wholesome quality, and well prepared and served.
- Every
prisoner shall be provided with a separate bed and with separate and
sufficient bedding.
- Windows
shall be large enough to allow prisoners to work by natural light and let
in fresh air.
- Searches
shall not be used to harass, intimidate, or unnecessarily intrude upon a
prisoner’s privacy.
- Every
prisoner shall be allowed to make a confidential request or complaint to
judicial or other competent authorities, which shall be dealt with
promptly.
- Regular
inspections of prisons shall include external inspections conducted by a
body independent of the prison administration that includes health-care
professionals.
- Prisoners
shall be kept informed of the more important items of news by the reading
of newspapers, periodicals or special institutional publications.
- Every
prisoner shall have at least one hour of suitable exercise in the open air
daily if the weather permits.[246]
The administration of Egyptian prisons is
controlled by Law 396 of 1956 for the Organization of Prisons, Interior
Ministry Decree 79 of 1961 for the Internal Regulations for Prisons, and
Interior Ministry Decree 691 of 1998 for the Quality of Prisoners’ Treatment
and Lives.[247]
The 1956 Prisons Law is the broadest of the
three, covering all aspects of life in prisons. As amended by President Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi in 2015, it leaves room for serious abuse and runs counter to
Rule 43 of the Mandela Rules, which forbids any kind of discipline that amounts
to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Rule 43 also
prohibits indefinite solitary confinement that lasts beyond 15 days.
Al-Sisi’s 2015 decree amended Article 43 of
the Prisons Law by extending the allowable period of solitary confinement from
15 to 30 days. Though the amendment took the positive step of eliminating
corporal punishment as a form of discipline, it added a level of discipline
beyond 30-day solitary confinement, allowing prison authorities to place an
inmate in a “private maximum security room” for up to six months.[248] Such
a practice would amount to cruel and inhuman treatment and possibly torture.
Article 42 of the Prisons Law, which has
remained unchanged since 1956, states that “it is permissible for visits to be
restricted or completely banned due to conditions at certain times for reasons
of health or related to security.”[249] As
documented in this report, Scorpion authorities have abused this vague
provision to arbitrarily ban visits from families and lawyers, sometimes for
months at a time, in contravention of the Mandela Rules.
Other provisions of the laws and decrees
governing Egyptian prisons guarantee inmates many rights, but Scorpion
authorities have flagrantly violated these provisions, including the following:
- Detainees
in temporary pretrial custody may receive visits once every week, while
convicted detainees may receive visits once every 15 days, for durations
of 60 minutes.[250]
- Inmates
may write up to four letters a month and conduct phone conversations of up
to three minutes two times a month.[251]
- Prison
doctors must inspect the prison and visit sick inmates and inmates held
alone once a day and must transfer sick inmates to the prison hospital.[252]
- Prison
doctors must submit cases of life-threatening or incapacitating illnesses
to the director of the prison medical department for consideration of
release.[253]
- Prison
wardens must implement doctors’ recommendations to change a prisoners’
diet or treatment if necessary for the prisoner’s health. In the case of a
disagreement, the warden must refer the issue to the director of the
prison medical department for the formation of a committee to consider it.[254]
- Prison
authorities must provide all prisoners with a minimum set of bedding,
clothes and hygienic items, including: a bed, a mattress, a pillow, a wool
blanket (and two in winter), plastic plates and spoons, a comb, two pieces
of soap, two changes of clothes, and underwear if the prisoner cannot
purchase his own.[255]
- The
prison warden must accept any serious complaint from a prisoner and send
the complaint to the public prosecution.[256]
- The
Interior Ministry’s Prisons Authority Sector must employ inspectors to
ensure that cleanliness, health and security requirements are fulfilled
inside prisons and that all regulations established for prisons are
implemented. Inspectors should submit reports to the assistant interior
minister for prisons.[257]
- Prisoners
are permitted to exercise for one hour in the morning and one hour in the
evening, except for Fridays and official holidays.[258]
- Prisoners
may possess books, newspapers, and magazines at their own expense.[259]
A researcher from the Middle East and North
Africa Division (MENA) of Human Rights Watch wrote this report and conducted
and planned the research jointly with a MENA assistant researcher who conducted
interviews and background research and assisted with translation. Neither can
be named to protect their safety.
Nadim Houry, deputy director in the MENA
division; Diederik Lohman, associate director in the Health and Human Rights division;
and Tom Porteous, deputy director of Programs, edited this report. Clive
Baldwin, senior legal advisor, provided legal review.
Human Rights Watch wishes to thank the
relatives of Scorpion inmates who, at risk to themselves and their loved ones,
helped break the wall of silence that surrounds prisons in Egypt by sharing
their stories. Human Rights Watch also wishes to thank the lawyers who continue
to defend their clients, share information, and help preserve the rule of law.
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