Defendants In Al Azhar Explosions Case Accuse Gov’t of Torture

Wives of the detainees pending investigations on Al-Azhar explosions lodged on Wednesday a complaint to counselor Abdul Magid Mahmoud, the attorney general, in which they confirmed that their husbands are tortured inside prisons and that the Interior Ministry refused to release them although they were acquitted and released by court.
 
They demanded in their complaint taking legal procedures to ensure stopping tortures against their husbands and punishing pepterators, in addition to implementing court rulings of releasing the detainees.
The complaint presented to the attorney general was signed by Amthal Mohamed Sayed Abdul Hamid, wife of detainee Tamer Al Sayed Al Moselhi, and wives of Rizk Said Said, Essam Mohamed, Ahmed Abdul Sadek Ibrahim and Mohamed Eid Labib .
 
The complaint pointed out to that article 85 of the law regulating prisons stated that the attorney general and his deputies have the right to enter prisons at any time to verify that the orders of the prosecution and the investigating judge and court rulings are implemented and to verify that no one is illegally imprisoned and not to illegally oblige any prisoner to work, in addition to isolating prisoners according to their categories.
 
Wife of detainee Tamer Al Sayed Al Moselhi confirmed that her husband was detained, immediately after Al-Azhar explosions, and he was sent, along with others, to Al-Wadi Al-Jadid prison without any legal justification;
 
She said that the Interior Ministry got used to ignoring court rulings and disrespecting law, and that it used to issue, on the following day  after issuing a court acquittals, new arrest warrants; she added that this ministry tortures also families of the detainees through making them travel long distances and spend much money to visit their loved ones for very short periods of time.
 
The wife of the detainee accuses the Interior Ministry of using various kinds of torture, and insulting and violating their dignity inside prisons in addition to giving them food which is not suitable for human use and polluted water leading to various chronic infections, like hepatitis, among them.
 
This complained was lodged to the attorney general only days after 46 detainees against the background of Al-Azhar explosions, in prisons of Damanhur, Al-Wadi Al-Jadid, Al-Ghrbaniyat, Abu Zabaal demanded denaturalizing them and allowing them to have a political asylum in Israel, due to two years of detention, during which faced a daily hell of torture by the state security officers and prison administrations and because of the diseases that they developed due to the conditions of the detention, according to them.
The detainees said in message they sent to Maat Center for Human Rights Studies:” We demand a political asylum to Israel because of our suffering in Egypt and its prisons, including torture, insults and harassment inside and outside prisons; food is not suitable for human use, water is polluted, leading to develop liver and other chronic diseases.”
The detainees expressed, in their message, their despair of the repeated detentions policy adopted by the Egyptian security, in addition to the full disrespect to court rulings and acquittals.
 
They demanded a political asylum to Israel in spite of the Israeli black history of killing POWs and prisoners, confirming that death in Israeli occupation inside prisons is easier than what they and their families face inside their homeland, including abuses and violations to human dignity, according to them.
 
For his part, Kamal Habib, the coordinator of the national initiative for the release of detainees told Ikhwanweb that detainees in Egyptian prisons are suffering in terms of living and health care conditions; they are tortured and face psychological and moral pressures.
 
Habib pointed out that there are 18 thousand political detainees in Egypt, according to the Amnesty International report about Egypt, and there are thousands of court acquittals which are disrespected by the Egyptian Interior Ministry.