The North Cairo criminal court renewed the remand detention of young Mahmoud Hussein, also known as the ‘anti-torture T-shirt detainee’, according to his brother Tarek ‘Tito’ Hussein on Tuesday.
His detention has been extended for another 45 days without trial, despite the accusations he is facing dating back to January 2014. In about two months, Hussein will have completed the maximum legal period in remand – two years.
“Expect good things, stay hopeful and optimistic,” Hussein told his older brother, in one of his letters, republished along with other messages of Hussein’s, collected by Amnesty International (AI) and Freedom for the Brave, a local NGO supporting Egyptian detainees.
For more than 662 days, the two young brothers have been exchanging letters through jail security, whenever they are not intercepted.
“The bitterness of separation disturbs the life of our small family. Pardon me, for I can no longer take the sight of these metal handcuffs around your wrists without trial,” Tito told his brother in one of his letters.
Hussein has been denied trial, and even attendance to his own renewal session more than 20 times. “Because prisoners are supposed to be deprived from everything in the eyes of the warder,” Tito previously told Daily News Egypt, after revealing a series of restrictions imposed on visitors to prisoners.
Tito has repeatedly condemned pre-trial detention in the way it is being used by the state to repress only the young, while security officers involved in citizens’ torture and corrupt businessmen are on the loose. “It is the worst of the arbitrary state,” he said.
