EGYPT
November 12, 2015
3 minutes read

Rights Organization Appeals to All Human Rights Activists for Solidarity with Detainee Safwat

The Egyptian Coordinating Committee of Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) appeals to all human rights organizations and NGOs to work closely together in an effort to save the life of the detainee Mahmoud Ehab Safwat, 28 years old. Egypt’s Interior Ministry (IM) insists on taking him back to his cell, although he suffers critical health conditions that need special care in a hospital.

ECRF affirms that IM security forces attempted to murder Mahmoud Safwat during his arrest on July 29, 2015. They threw him from the third floor of a block of flats. Then, they took him away, badly injured, along with his wife, to an unknown location. They were held in isolation for 24 hours, then his wife was released. Mahmoud Safwat was transferred to Heliopolis Hospital, under guard, with broken pelvis and spine. Blood accumulated in Safwat’s skull causing him to go into a coma for several days. His health condition is unstable until now.

The IM is now exposing Safwat’s life to more serious danger by taking him away from hospital and back to prison. This is the same IM policy used with increasing regularity by security forces recently. It is no secret that the IM has adopted an approach of extrajudicial killing of detainees in prisons and detention centers by deliberately withholding all medical care and holding inmates in squalid and poor health conditions. So, detainees are not allowed essential medical treatment or important and urgent surgical operations. This practice has already caused the death of hundreds of detainees in IM prisons and detention centers. There are thousands more of similar cases likely to suffer the same fate.

ECRF calls upon all legal experts in Egypt, every activist, prosecution staff and every judge and jurist, to assume their responsibility towards all detainees in Egypt, whose lives seem now unworthy of the IM’s attention or care. The IM’s policy of ignoring its responsibilities towards the medical treatment, health and security of detainees must be rejected and condemned in all free countries that respect and observe the rule of law.

Egyptian Coordinating Committee of Rights and Freedoms

Cairo: Tuesday – November 10, 2015