Parliamentary committee calls for new prisons in Egypt

The Egyptian parliament’s Defence and National Security Committee has called for the construction of a number of new prisons in order to accommodate the huge numbers of detainees currently being held by the government. The committee also called for prisoners’ families to get better treatment by the authorities during visits, and for video conferencing technology to be used in court sessions to cut costs, instead of having to transfer prisoners to the courts physically.

Since the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Egypt has built 11 new prisons in provinces where there were no central prisons, in order to accommodate the vastly increased number of detainees. In the past three years, the Egyptian authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on political opponents, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood and its followers as well as secular critics of the coup government.

Twenty-five out of the 27 Egyptian provinces now have central prisons. There are also camps affiliated to the central security agencies and military police, which include small prisons allocated for political detainees.

In a closed meeting held on Wednesday, the parliamentary committee demanded that officials in charge of the relevant agencies should ensure that the desired goals behind penal institutions are achieved. These include the rehabilitation of prisoners in various crafts, improving detainees’ literacy levels and motivating them to raise their level of education.

Following the meeting, the commission undersecretary, former army Major-General Yaheya Qedwani, said that members demanded that officials at the interior ministry should allocate a proper budget to provide religious care for prisoners, enhance the level of medical treatment available to them, and arrange to make prisons productive areas so as to save revenue for the prisoners’ benefit by making money available at the time of their release to help them start a new life.