President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spares no opportunity in demanding that citizens tighten their belts and share the financial burdens Egypt has experienced due to difficult economic conditions. In the mean time, nine new prisons have been built since 2013, over and above 382 detention centers inside police stations across the Egyptian governorates. Having been demolished during the early days of the 2011 revolution, many of these centers have been reconstructed.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spares no opportunity in demanding that citizens tighten their belts and share the financial burdens Egypt has experienced due to difficult economic conditions. In the mean time, nine new prisons have been built since 2013, over and above 382 detention centers inside police stations across the Egyptian governorates. Having been demolished during the early days of the 2011 revolution, many of these centers have been reconstructed.
El-Sisi’s latest call was made during the inauguration of a number of projects in 6th of October City. “There is no real opportunity to explain the economic situation to people in actual figures so as to make them feel better,” said el-Sisi, calling on officials to explain to people the actual cost of delivered services compared to the set price.
El-Sisi said each liter of drinking water delivered to people costs the state L.E. 1.6 (US $.18), while the price is only L.E. 0.23 ($ .026). Should this trend persist, said el-Sisi, the government would no longer be able to deliver because the cost runs as high as L.E. 40 million (US $4.5 million) a day.
Despite that rhetoric, the scene of the red carpet extending for several kilometers as a welcome for the presidential motorcade came as a surprise to all. According to British Daily Mail newspaper, the cost of that carpet was £143,000 (US $201,700).
Spate of new prisons
In August 2013, the authorities started the construction of the high security Gamsa prison. With an area of 42,000 square meters, the prison, located near Gamsa City in Dakahlia Governorate, cost approximately US $100 million, according to the Ministry of Interior (MoI).
In late September 2013, the Council of Ministers (CoM), under former Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi, endorsed a draft Presidential Decree to amend certain provisions of Presidential Decree No. 165 of 2007, concerning the evacuation of certain prisons to build other alternative ones. “The MoI Land Property Fund shall exploit the space of evacuated prisons to build substitute prisons,” read the amendment.
At the end of 2014, the CoM issued a decision to build the two-storey Nahda prison in Cairo over an area of 12,000 square meters. On March 16, 2014, the MoI issued Decision No. 84 to build two prisons in Minya governorate: the first to hold prisoners with life sentences, while the second is a high security prison.
Despite a budget deficit of L.E. 684 billion (US $77 billion), in 2015 alone, five new prisons were built by the MoI at a cost of L.E. 1.2 billion (US $135 million). An addition to 42 prisons previously built in 25 districts.
“The plan presented by the MoI to the Ministry of Finance for building five new prisons means that their cost is at the expense of development projects,” says Adel Amer, Director of the Egyptians’ Center for Economic, Political and Legal Studies.
In early 2015, former Minister of Interior Mohammed Ibrahim inaugurated the Giza Central Prison in 6th of October City. “The prison has been built due to an urgent need to accommodate the recently increased numbers of prisoners in detention centers of Giza police stations,” said Major General Kamal Dali, Director of the Giza Security Directorate.
In early June, the MoI opened a new central prison in 15th of May City. The MoI said the new prison was built on an area of 105,000 square meters to accommodate nearly 4,000 prisoners at a cost of nearly US$ 17 million. The prison was constructed in less than a year by the Egyptian El-Mokawloon El-Arab Company, chaired by former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab, prior to assuming the post of prime minister.
On November 27, Al-Sharqia Governor Sayeed Abdulaziz announced the allocation of a 10-acre plot of land inside Salehia City for building a new prison at the request of security services.
On December 6, the Damietta Governorate’s Executive Council approved a plan to increase the area of land allocated for the Damietta Central Prison from 19,800 to 22217.39 square meters.
Three days later, the CoM approved a project by the president to allocate a piece of land for the state with an area of 103 acres in Giza governorate to the MoI, to construct a central prison with full facilities, including a camp for Giza Security Forces Department, a training center, and a section for Giza Traffic Police Department, according to an International Coalition for Rights and Freedoms report on the increased number of prisons in Egypt.
The Personal Initiative for Human Rights says the Prison Authorities’ website has not disclosed the actual numbers of prisons, pointing out that some concentration camps are comprised of more than one prison.
Human rights criticism
The decisions to build new prisons have stirred a wave of anger among human rights activists who considered that action a move aimed to increase the number of detainees, confirming that the status of present prisons is very bad and inhumane.
Human rights activist Susan Fayyad from El-Nadim Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture believes that the building of new prisons means more detainees and repressive measures under no fair trials or humane treatment. “New prisons are a welcomed move in democratic countries with fair trials, no torture and impartial judges,” she says. “The cost of repression is expensive, and the construction of new prisons further burdens the country, while the cost of justice is far much less.”
“Egypt needs justice, rather than new prisons,” says lawyer Reza Marei, a legal researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “Would it not be more useful to reduce pre-trial detentions and arrests, instead of building new prisons?”
He argues that the government’s message is very clear, and it means that it will not release pre-trial prisoners and detainees, but will try to reduce crowding in prison cells by building new jails. The new prisons, says Marei, will not solve the overcrowding problem without pursuing other alternative policies such as a review of cases and cessation of political persecution.
George Isaac, a member of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), criticizes government policy of building new prisons. “I wish half the budget allocated for new prisons would have gone for improving the inhumane conditions of detention centers inside police stations,” he says.
An NCHR report issued on May 31, 2015, says prisons and detention centers suffer from overcrowding exceeding 300 and 160 percent respectively.
Addressing overcrowding
“Security forces protect the country and there are no repressive arrests as some people who hate the country claim,” says Major General Abu Bakr Abdulkarim, Deputy Minister of Interior and MoI Public Relations and Media Director. “Constructing new prisons aims at easing the recent crowding in central prisons, which has caused outbreaks of disease.”
Abdulkarim maintains that the MoI wants to build decent and humane prisons in the wake of an NCHR report describing prisons in Egypt as humanely inappropriate. The MoI, he says, is open to criticism and tries to find solutions for arising problems.
He attributes the increased number of detainees to the arrest of a large number of Muslim Brotherhood subversive cells.
