Tag: detainees

Amnesty slams Mubarak for illegal detention of thousands and repression of strikes

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

The Ministry of Interior holds around 18,000 administrative detainees in “degrading inhumane conditions,” Amnesty International said in its 2008 report on human rights in Egypt.
“Some had been held for more than a decade, including many whose release had been repeatedly ordered by courts,” the report said.
The report said the conditions in which these detainees are held are cruel. It said hundreds were reportedly ill with tuberculosis, skin diseases and other ailments.
The report, which was released Wednesday, also stated that Egyptian nationals suspected of terrorism “who had been unlawfully transferred to Egypt by other governments,” also remained in prison.
It criticized the constitutional amendments that were “rushed” through parliament in March 2007 as “the most serious setback for human rights since the state of emergency was introduced in 1981.
“The amendments cemented the sweeping powers of the police and entrenched in permanent law emergency powers that have been used systematically to violate human rights, including prolonged detention without charge, torture and other ill-treatment, restrictions on freedom of speech, association and assembly, and grossly unfair trials before military courts and special emergency courts,” the report said.
The report said that torture is “widespread and systematic” and that it led or contributed to at least 20 deaths in 2007. It said that the few prosecutions of alleged tortures were not related to political cases and were usually in cases where the victim died.
The report cited the Emad El-Kabir case as one of the “rare successful prosecutions” of an alleged torturer; the two officers implicated in the case were sentenced to three years in prison.
On the issue of violence, the report cited statistics by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) saying that two women were being raped every hour in Egypt, which has witnessed an increase of sexual harassment and sex crimes. ECWR had said that only 12 percent of the 2,500 women who reported sexual harassment to the center took their cases to the police.
Amnesty also noted the increase in the number of strikes taking place across the country, althoughEgyptian law deems them “illegal” and “unauthorized” by the state-sponsored General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU).
The strikes, the report explained, “sparked by rising living costs, growing poverty and other grievances, coincided with political protests by the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition force, and secular opposition groups campaigning for democratic reforms. Political activists, journalists and bloggers were jailed for peacefully expressing their views.”
In response to the wave of strikes, the report continued, the authorities increased the “repression of trade unionists as well as NGO activists.”

Mahalla Updates

Posted on By 3arabawy

The Mahalla labor leaders are to be interrogated Tuesday by the Prosecutor, after a complaint was submitted from the Ghazl el-Mahalla company – acting at the behest of SS Police – accusing them of “agitating workers to strike”.

The five names included in the interrogation are of the Leading Textile Workers’ League activists Gihad Taman, Wael Habib, Gamal Abu el-Esa’ad as well as the two detained workers Kamal el-Fayoumi and Kareem el-Beheiri… It’s unclear, whether Kamal and Kareem who are currently on a hunger strike in Bourg el-Arab Prison will be transferred to Mahalla for the interrogation or not.

In other news, Muhammad Maree, Buck’s translator, was re-categorized by the prison authorities as a “political (not criminal) detainee,” and moved to the same cell where the Mahalla 3 are kept. Here’s a report by Sarah Carr:

Three former employees of the Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory have launched a second, open-ended, hunger strike in protest against their detention.
Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin and Karim El-Beheiry were arrested separately on April 6.
All three were involved in the organization of a strike in the factory planned for the same day, which collapsed following worker disunity and intimidation by security bodies.
Violence subsequently erupted in the Delta town after security bodies clashed with residents protesting increasing food prices.
The three men are currently being held in Alexandria’s Borg El-Arab prison.
In a letter sent to the head of the Judges’ Club last week, the men announced that they are on hunger strike, and called for a public prosecution office investigation into why they are being held without charge over a month after their arrest.
El-Fayyoumy, Amin and El-Beheiry were dismissed from their employment in the factory shortly after their arrest
Lawyer Ahmad Ezzat visited the men on Saturday with three other lawyers from a group formed to assist individuals detained in connection with the events of April 6.
He told Daily News Egypt that the three men have decided to launch a second, open-ended, hunger strike to protest their illegal detention and summary dismissal from the factory.
“Sacking workers involved in labor organizing is a common tool used by the authorities in order to make it impossible for them to pursue these activities without a source of income,” Ezzat explained.
Muhammad Maree, a translator who was arrested in Mahalla with American national James Buck on April 10, is also being held in Borg El-Arab prison without charge.
Buck was released the day after the Mahalla public prosecution office ordered that both men be released.
Ezzat says that Marei has been moved to a different prison wing.
“Prison authorities have finally agreed to requests that he be held with political prisoners rather than convicted criminals and he has been moved,” Ezzat told Daily News Egypt.
Under Egyptian law political detainees are meant to be separated from those convicted of ordinary criminal offenses.

Updates on the Mahalla detainees

Posted on By 3arabawy

AFP is saying that those who joined the hunger strike in Bourg el-Arab Prison have gone up to 280 prisoners:

Dozens of inmates at a prison in northern Egypt went on hunger strike on Sunday to protest against their continued detention despite repeated court orders for their release, an inmate said.
Some 280 prisoners at Borg El-Arab jail near Alexandria launched the protest because the authorities have not freed them despite individual court orders to do so, the inmate said.
The man, who asked that his name not be used, told AFP by telephone that he has been in jail for five years and had obtained 13 court orders for his release.
“Every time I got a court order I would be taken to a police station to finish the paperwork for my release and instead I’d be rearrested and sent back to jail,” he said by telephone.
“We now appeal to President [Hosni] Mubarak to intervene and look into our cases,” the inmate added.
Rights groups have repeatedly criticized Egypt for keeping prisoners behind bars after their release has been ordered.

I spoke with a Socialist source in Cairo, who also did not have much details about what’s going on, except that he said the news he’s getting talks about 500 detainees joining the hunger strike, not just 280.. But nothing can be confirmed at the moment.

More worrying, according to the Socialist source in Cairo and another in Ghazl el-Mahalla, State Security Police has submitted a new report to the Prosecutor, accusing the five following Textile Workers League activists in Ghazl el-Mahalla of “agitating for a strike”: Gihad Taman, Wael Habib, Gamal Abu el-Esa’ad as well as the two detained workers Kamal el-Fayoumi and Kareem el-Beheiri. This means the govt is moving to try to keep the already detained Mahalla activists for a longer period of time in prison, add more labor organizers to the detainees’ population, and turn it into a trial in court.