Blogojournalist Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, and the 18 detained MB students are to start an open-ended hunger-strike tomorrow Tuesday, if the Prosecutor extends their detention, after being subject to humiliating treatment in Mahkoum Tora Prison.
In a statement sent out of prison, the detainees complained from:
1-Confinement for 23 hours a day in overcrowded cells where an average of 22 inmates are kept in 10×22 feet cells infested with bugs with only one extremely filthy bathroom to share.
2-Numerous assaults by criminal prisoners and thugs, including sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
3-Use of illegal drugs inside prison cells by criminals and drug dealers, and the produced smoke which makes it very difficult to even breath an already polluted air, in addition to extremely foul language and screaming all night by intoxicated thugs which became a source of psychological agony.
4-Poor medical care in handling life threatening and contagious medical conditions, including skin diseases and HIV. Four cases of chicken pox and measles were denied appropriate care and hospital admission.
The statement also complained that the students who were mostly preparing for their final exams, surrendered their school books to the prison administration in protest, since it became impossible for them to study in such awful environment.
Moneim is to be interrogated by the Prosecutor tomorrow, at the Tagammu el-Khames Prosecution’s Office, Nasr City. Please express your solidarity by showing up tomorrow 10am in front of the office.
If you can’t show up, it’d be still great to at least write one follow up posting on his case, and circulate information among your contacts and friends, inside Egypt and abroad, about the abuses against Moneim and the Egyptian political detainees languishing in Mubarak’s gulag.