Amnesty decries Egyptian prison conditions 10 years after Arab Spring

Human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, has decried Egyptian prison conditions 10 years after the Arab Spring.

Thousands of prisons have continued to be held for months or years under often inhumane conditions in overcrowded prisons, according to a report published by the organisation on Monday.

According to the report, prisoners receive unhealthy food; are kept in dark, poorly ventilated cells with little or no fresh air and unsanitary conditions with little access to water and toilets.

Inadequate health care makes prisoners suffer unnecessarily and in some cases may have resulted in death, Amnesty alleges.

Contact with relatives is greatly reduced or completely denied and the report also notes that there is no uniform strategy in the fight against the coronavirus.

In its report, Amnesty International documented the detention experiences of 67 individuals, 10 of whom had died in custody and two shortly after their release in 2019 or 2020.

Carried out primarily between February 2020 and November 2020, the research focused on 16 prisons.

Amnesty has evidence of prison authorities `targeting prisoners critical of the government and denying them adequate food or family visits,’ Markus Beeko, Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany, asserted.

The UN estimates that 114,000 people are in prison in Egypt.

The government has rejected reports of torture and bad conditions; the state news site Al-Ahram referred to what it called “negative rumours.’’

Earlier, the Interior Ministry released a video from the notorious Torah prison in Cairo showing inmates being treated with the latest medical standards or reading, painting and baking. (dpa/NAN)