A detainee in Talkha police station died on Friday of suffocation in an overcrowded cell, adding to a rising toll of deaths in police custody.
Ashraf Shoueib was detained in the Daqahleya police station detention, pending investigations into an unpaid trust receipt case.
Media reports said Shoueib was suffering from thoracic asthma. Rights lawyer Ahmed Mefreh told Daily News Egypt the detainee was subject to medical neglect, which led to his unfortunate death.
Since the beginning of the year, several incidents of prisoners dying in police custody have taken place.
The semi-governmental body National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) cited 36 cases of deaths in custody in 2014, according to the council’s member Salah Sallam, while estimations from rights NGOs rise to over 80 cases.
A report compiled by El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, commemorating a year of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s presidency, showed that 127 cases of death by or in the custody of security forces have occurred since the start of the year.
The report revealed 19 cases of death due to torture and 11 due to medical neglect.
The state repeatedly denies any torture claims, often referring to “some violations” and “individual mistakes” as opposed to “systematic torture”.
