The temperature rose over 40 degrees Celsius and Cairo was recorded several times to be the hottest spot on earth in the last two months. Everyone stays in air-conditioned areas or escapes to resorts and parks, while detainees desperately seek a breeze in their small cells, each filled with dozens of people. Some civil society organizations and detainee solidarity campaigns estimate the number of prisoners per cell (typically a few square meters) to be about 40.
The temperature rose over 40 degrees Celsius and Cairo was recorded several times to be the hottest spot on earth in the last two months. Everyone stays in air-conditioned areas or escapes to resorts and parks, while detainees desperately seek a breeze in their small cells, each filled with dozens of people. Some civil society organizations and detainee solidarity campaigns estimate the number of prisoners per cell (typically a few square meters) to be about 40.
With the increasing temperatures in Egypt, activists launched a campaign in five languages titled #IWantToBreath in solidarity with the detainees. Dozens of participants in the campaign wore plastic bags on their heads to express solidarity with the prisoners’ suffering.
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“The cell was like an oven,” says Ahmad Massad, a journalist detained for more than six months and released last June. “We were stacked atop of each other and we took turns (of six hours each) sleeping on a few tiles while the other prisoners stayed on their feet. The heat was unbearable. Dozens of us would collapse unconscious. The administration did not care about our suffering and we concealed our cries fearing torture.”
“We used to take our clothes off and stay in underwear especially with the administration ban on fans,” Massad continues. “They did not even try to redistribute prisoners for a more humane life. We wished for solitary confinement.”
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“Everything gets hurt… even our exhausted souls,” says Ahmad Abdel Nabi, a detainee charged with protesting against the waiver of Egypt of Tiran and Sanafir Islands to Saudi Arabia last April. Abdel Nabi spent 45 days in a central security camp in Cairo. “The central security camp was a pile of people on top of each other, with no place for a breeze to pass between the stacked bodies exhausted by the inhumane treatment,” he says.
Abdel Nabi says that the food and medicine received from their families and lawyers used to rot due to the high temperature. “Sometimes, three or four detainees would faint every day because of the unbearable temperature,” he says. “There was also clear discrimination, since some detainees were able to pay to get better treatment. Some would pay the guards 500 pounds in return for using fans for one hour and the rest of us collected that money amongst ourselves, without the knowledge of the prison administration.”
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Many human rights reports show that the number of detainees in Egyptian prisons since 30 June 2013 has reached 40,000 with an average of 50 prisoners per cell (3-5 meters). Most detainees are not allowed to exercise, which violates the Prisons Authority Law no. 369 of 1955 and the international conventions signed by Egypt.
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Ayat Ali, the wife of a Muslim Brotherhood prisoner, says that her husband’s father died in front of Wadi el-Natrun prison due to the heat because the prison’s administration did not provide waiting areas for prisoners’ families to shelter themselves from the heat – they stand waiting from six in the morning until 3 o’clock in the afternoon under the sun.
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Mohammad Issa, a lawyer in the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights says that detainees in the Egyptian prisons suffer the worst situations a human being can imagine. He adds that prisoners, especially political detainees, face double punishment: imprisonment and detention under inhumane conditions. Issa pointed out that a well-known form of torture is to detain political prisoners in the same cells with criminals and allow the latter to abuse them. Other forms include stacking dozens of them in one cell, denying them food and medicine from outside and ignoring the environmental conditions such as extreme heat or cold.
Issa gave the example of Malek Adly, the human rights lawyer who was detained due to the protests of Tiran and Sanafir. Adly is detained in a 2×3-meter cell, he’s not allowed to exercise or to see the sun. He’s not allowed to go out to pray nor go to the library like other prisoners. His cell does not even have a bed, and the prison administration has denied him a fan. He is only allowed out of his cell to go to the court.
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Excerpts of Laws on Detainees
Text one:
“All those who are apprehended, detained or have their freedom restricted shall be treated in a way that preserves their dignity. They may not be tortured, terrorized, or coerced. They may not be physically or mentally harmed, or arrested and confined in designated locations that are appropriate according to humanitarian and health standards. The state shall provide means of access for those with disabilities. Any violation of the above is a crime and the perpetrator shall be punished under the law.”
Article 55 of Egypt’s Constitution of 2014
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Text two:
“Convicts and prisoners are able to bring, at their expense, authorized books, newspapers and magazines to read during their spare time. The prison administration must inspect those books, newspapers and magazines before giving them to prisoners and must make sure they are free of anything that violates the law, provokes senses and feelings or disturbs security and faith. They must sign to that effect and stamp it with a Tora stamp or a prison stamp. If the aforementioned items included indecent publications and printing, competent authorities must be notified.”
Article 15 of the Egyptian Prisons By-laws
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Text Three:
“The furniture of the prisoners who are authorized to stay in a furnished cell should be as follows: a hospital-style bed, a mattress, a pillow, two pillow cases, two bed sheets, a wool blanket in summer, two wool blankets in winter, a fiber mat, a wooden chair, an iron rack, a tin washtub, a tin jug, a soap bar in the absence of a basin and a faucet, a small table, a mirror, a pot and a plate for water, a hair brush, a comb, a fork, a spoon and a fan.”
Article 83 of the Egyptian Prisons By-laws
