The Geneva-based NGO, Committee for Justice (CFJ), has said that Egyptian citizen, Mahmoud Abdel Jawad, has been tortured to death at Nabaruh police station.
Mahmoud was on his way to the hospital in Nabaruh, in Egypt’s Dakahlia governorate, with his wife and daughter when he was arrested.
He was beaten and his wife was shocked multiple times with a stun gun in the middle of the street, according to the human rights organisation.
Mahmoud was then taken to Nabaruh police station where he was tortured for three days by electric shock and brutally beaten until he died on 25 July.
“CFJ classifies Abdel Jawad’s death as an extrajudicial killing, which is a crime punishable by international law,” the NGO said in a statement. “CFJ calls for the individuals involved in his torture and subsequent death to be held legally accountable.”
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Reports of torture, mistreatment, poor prison conditions and medical neglect in Egyptian prisons are rife.
Five people have died in detention in July alone, and 22 since the beginning of this year, including a former Member of Parliament, Ragab Mohamed Abu Zeid Zair.
Zair’s diabetes, bronchitis and weak heart muscle were among the medical conditions his family believed were grounds for his release. But authorities did not grant the request, and Zair’s health deteriorated in prison.
In February, Saad Mahmoud Abdel-Ghani Khedr died in Borg Al-Arab prison, also after being denied medical attention.
Then, in June, Saleh Abd Al-Sattar Saad Rahim, 41, died from torture in the Adwa police station in Minya Governorate in southern Egypt.
When Rahim’s family went to collect his body, they found it was covered in marks of torture.
Despite these deaths, earlier this week, the head of Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights compared the new prison complex in Wadi Al-Natroun, on the outskirts of Cairo, to a five-star hotel because of its sports complex, swimming pool, workshops and hospital.
Yet, in 2019, Adel Abdulwahab Abu Eisheh died there after being denied medical attention for his liver disease and diabetes.
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Since Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took charge of Egypt in 2013, dozens of Egyptian citizens have died in detention.
In 2021, Amnesty International recorded that at least 52 people died in detention centres across the country due to medical complications, and four died following reports that they had been tortured.
After their deaths, Egyptian prosecutors have failed to carry out independent and effective investigations into how and why prisoners are dying.
In the spring of 2022, prominent economist, Ayman Hadhoud, died in a psychiatric hospital of torture, one month after he was forcibly disappeared, but his family was not told he had died until one month after that.
An independent pathologist who examined Hadhoud’s body found burn marks on his forearms and face that suggested he was repeatedly injured before his death.
Pictures that circulated on Twitter allegedly proved that Hadhoud had a skull fracture and a broken nose before he died.
Rights groups said that Egyptian authorities failed to conduct an independent and transparent investigation into Ayman’s death after they closed their probe six days after announcing it.
In 2018, the death of 22-year-old Afroto by torture sparked protests outside Moqattam Police Station. Then, two years later, protests in the neighbourhood of Moneeb in Giza demonstrated against the torturing to death by police officers of 26-year-old Islam Al-Ostraly after he refused to pay a bribe.
That same year, dozens protested inside Gamassa prison after two detainees, one of them 22, were tortured to death.
The beating to death of Khaled Saeed in 2010 by police in the northern city of Alexandria inspired millions of demonstrators to take to the streets for the Egyptian uprising that eventually toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.
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