I saw detainees being tortured, Egypt activist says after fleeing to UK

Sanaa Seif, the sister of the detained Egyptian political activist, Alaa Abdelfattah, confirmed that she witnessed detainees being tortured during her detention in Egypt.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, the 28-year-old Egyptian activist said her decision to escape Egypt and travel to London after her release from jail was not an easy one. Living in exile, she explained, means not only saying goodbye to family and friends and being far from the country where her brother is imprisoned and on hunger strike.

Sanaa has been imprisoned three times since the January 2011 revolution, and she is now fighting for the release of her brother, one of the most prominent political prisoners in the country.

“It took a lot of contemplation (…) I had time to think – this was my third stretch inside. (…) I had to accept that could be my future. That’s what the authorities threatened.”

“The cell I’d been in the first time housed seven of us, this time, we were 82 women in the same space,” she said, adding that being charged as a terrorist meant the treatment she received changed.

“I was interrogated for hours, with only light clothes on while the AC was on its coldest setting. Neither I nor my lawyer knew what I was being accused of. I was told that whatever happened, nobody would hear or believe me.”

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She said from her cell should could hear and see detainees being tortured, she said this was the prison guards’ way of torturing her as her family status afforded her a little protection in prison. Instead of hurting her directly, she explained, guards would bring women into her cell and break them up in front of her.

Sanaa Seif was sentenced to a year and a half in prison in 2021 for “spreading false news” after she was detained outside the public prosecutor’s office where she was filing a complaint about an assault on her and her mother.