Mirvat, a housekeeper who lives in a block building in Faisal Neighborhood, wakes up every Sunday morning to prepare for her visit to Khaled, her 20-year-old son incarcerated at the Giza Central Prison, west of Cairo.

Mirvat, a housekeeper who lives in a block building in Faisal Neighborhood, wakes up every Sunday morning to prepare for her visit to Khaled, her 20-year-old son incarcerated at the Giza Central Prison, west of Cairo.

Mirvat needs two hours to pack the bags of clean clothes and dry food which has to keep for as long as possible in the hot August weather. She struggles with two bags using three means of transportation and three and a half hours later, she reaches the prison by 11:00. She waits another three hours in uncomfortable waiting areas newly established by the prisoners’ families to protect them from the sun’s heat. For every visit the families pay L.E. 75 (US $8) to cover the prison’s maintenance fees. 

The check-in procedure depends on which guard Mirvat is confronted with. She complains that she is treated like a criminal and that the food she spends long hours preparing spoils by the time she is finished with the inspection procedures. She finally reaches a huge hall divided by a wire fence that separates her from Khaled. She spends half an hour with her only son.

Preventative detention

Khaled was arrested on the dawn of December 30, 2015 by State Security during the first-term examinations at the Faculty of Law in Helwan University. His house was searched and his laptop confiscated. Khaled was a member of the Bread and Freedom Party, which is still under supervision. He was accused of forming an illegal movement called the January Movement. Case 796 of 2015 included 10 suspects, eight of them were released in March 2016 and Khaled and another detainee remained imprisoned.

When the January 25 Revolution erupted, Khaled was a secondary school student. His mother says that she hated her son’s interest in politics at such an early age. “We are doing nothing wrong,” he told her. Khaled was not able to take the Civil Law exam in the first term due to the examination procedures at the Bolak Dakrour Police Station.

Mirvat describes that period as very difficult. “I visited him three times a week: on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The visits at the police stations are frequent but unsatisfying. I used to pay the policeman L.E. 200 (US $22.50) just to let me hug my son. There were 40 inmates in the cells and their families had to give them what they needed in one minute.”

There was no room for sleeping in the police stations’ cells, let alone studying. Under such circumstances, Khaled did the second term examinations under the supervision of a special committee at the Tarra Prison.

After Khaled finished his exams, he was moved to the Giza Central Prison where conditions were only slightly better.

Political punishment

Khaled’s case reflects the current crackdown on political activities in Egypt. He was not arrested during a protest or a political meeting but rather from his home. Before the fifth anniversary of the January 25 Revolution, hundreds of flats were raided and searched and scores of activists were arrested from their homes and even from cafes.  

The Egyptian laws do not have a clear definition of preventive detention. Huda Narallah, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, says in her latest report entitled ‘Endless Imprisonment’: “Hundreds of people have been affected by the preventive detention dilemma. There is no means to appeal the decisions of the Criminal Court’s judges to sentence suspects to more than two years of imprisonment. No entity has authority over the judges in terms of interpreting laws when they differ over enforcing some of them, except for the Supreme Constitutional Court, which returns to what legislators had in mind when they drafted the law. The preventive detention has turned into a political punishment without trials or defense rights.”

The report showed that 1,464 people are put in preventive detention in the Egyptian prisons and their detention periods exceeded the legal ones which goes against Article 143 of the Criminal Procedures that stipulates that preventive detention should not exceed 24 months in the criminal cases. This figure only represents the cases which the initiative was able to verify in four governorates.

Those put in preventive detention do not have to wear blue uniforms. They can wear normal clothes. They are not allowed to have any exceptional visits. They are only allowed 45-minutes weekly visits. The prisons’ regulations allow them exceptional ones on official holidays which include paid off days including the religious and national ones.

They do not enjoy the luxury of the daily sport periods like the sentenced prisoners. Lawyer Mohamed Issa, a member of the commission defending Khaled, says: “Although the law states that suspects are innocent until they are proved otherwise, the prisons’ general regulations do not allow those put in preventive detention the two-hour daily break. The treatment of political prisoners is different from that of the people imprisoned in criminal cases and it varies from prison to another. Even visit permits are hardly given to the lawyers. Sometimes they give us visit permits and others they do not.” Issa believes that the preventive detention is a punishment for all. “Families pay L.E. 1000 every month and this amount increases with the passage of months and years waiting for a sentence. I know some people who sold their lands to continue visiting their sons.” 

*Update

During the production of this article, the Criminal Department 14 in Giza released Khaled and another suspect. Yet Khaled must still attend a session to renew the imprisonment period until the department decides to close the case due to insufficient evidence or refer all suspects to court. Khaled, who is looking forward to starting the new academic year, will have to visit the Bolak Dakrour Police Station on a daily basis as a precautionary measure.