A Cairo criminal court renewed the detention Mahmoud Hussein for another 45 days, in one of the longest cases of pre-trial detention. Since his arrest, Hussein’s remand period has exceed 600 days due to continuous renewals of his detention without trial. Moreover, he was prevented from attending more than 20 renewal sessions.
The young detainee’s brother, Tarek Hussein or ‘Tito’, a member of Al-Dostour Party (DP) committee for freedoms and rights, says the long period of detention is punishment in itself under the current “arbitrary rule of the regime”.
DP held a conference on Wednesday, hosting political activists released under a presidential pardon in Eid El-Adha. “Our colleagues did not deserve to be in jail because of the controversial Protest Law,” said DP prominent member Khaled Daoud.
“It seems that we had unfulfilled expectations on post-30 June after a harsh year under the Muslim Brotherhood, but unfortunately the continuous failures to achieve any of the concepts of bread, freedom, social justice and human dignity called for by the 25 January revolution are reasons for youth frustration,” he stated.
As Daoud called for solidarity with “the rest who remain behind bars”. On his part, Tito recalled his brother’s case, a case pertaining to merely wearing an anti-torture T-shirt.
“His sessions barely last five minutes and the decision is always the same, which is to keep him in,” Tito said. “Recently I was on a phone interview on TV, and another interviewee, an Interior deputy minister said ‘there were no political detainees in Egypt and the conditions in prisons are hotel-like.’”
“My brother was taken to four different prisons so far, weekly visits have not exceed 15 minutes despite legally being one hour and Mahmoud was prevented from attending his session in court for over 20 times, ‘for security reasons’ even though other prisoners were being normally transferred to court the same days,” Tito added.
“There are nearly 12,000 people in remand in places I and my colleagues were jailed in, they can be described more as cemeteries. People disappear for months, against all constitutional norms and laws,” he continued.
“I promise my brother that I will keep defending the concept of a nation without torture, the reason he went to jail for and the dream he carried,” he concluded.
