Man dies in Egypt prison bringing total of 5 to die in custody since November

A 47-year-old Egyptian man has died in Egypt’s Badr 3 Prison bringing the total number of deaths in jail to five since the beginning of November.

Another prisoner died in Badr Prison complex #Egypt

Badr 3 prison is in total isolation, now with the rising number of prisoners' deaths, the families say they are dreading the ring of the phone pic.twitter.com/ks0BQAoe2q

— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 28, 2022

Hassan Attia died from the poor conditions in which he was held, and medical neglect, just weeks after he was transferred to Badr from Minya Prison.

He was married with three children and has been detained for seven years.

الضحية الخامسة داخل السجون خلال شهر نوفمبر الجاري
عاجل | وفاة المعتقل حسن دياب حسن عطيه، 47 عاماً، من محافظة دمياط داخل سجن بدر 3، نتيجة سوء ظروف الاحتجاز، وذلك بعد أسابيع من نقله من سجن المنيا. pic.twitter.com/uAsG7NV5H7

— حقهم – TheirRight (@TheirRightAR) November 28, 2022

In mid-November two prisoners at Badr Prison died within 24 hours of each other. One of them, Magdy Abdo Al-Shabrawi, died from kidney failure, exacerbated by the conditions of his detention and a lack of appropriate medical care.

The issue of political prisoners has been highlighted during the recent Cop27 UN conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh through Alaa Abdelfattah, the British-Egyptian activist who has spent the most part of the last decade behind bars.

His imprisonment symbolises the detention of 60,000 prisoners of conscience who have been detained under the Sisi government without due process and who have been widely abused whilst inside, including with torture by electric shock.

Another high-profile death in detention this year was Ayman Hadhoud who went missing at the beginning of February, died in March in under suspicious circumstances, but authorities did not admit that he had died until 9 April.

The UN and human rights advocates lamented the fact that there has still not been a thorough, transparent, and impartial investigation into the circumstances surrounding Ayman’s death, like the thousands of others who have died in suspicious circumstances.

READ: Egypt: Engineer Essam Kamal forcibly disappeared for six years

Hassan Attia’s death brings the total number of detainees to die since the beginning of this year to 35, and since 2013, 1,145.

According to Amnesty International, in 2021 at least 52 detainees died in custody because of medical complications and at least four after torture.

In most cases, prosecutors failed to carry out independent and effective investigations into the circumstances and causes of their deaths.