El-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence issued Monday its report for the month of December, in which it documented the number of oppression incidents reported in the media.
These include cases of prisoners’ death in custody, citizens’ deaths in security raids, torture cases, enforced disappearances, medical negligence in prisons, and other forms of violence committed by state institutions, mainly on behalf of the security apparatus.
Although the report said it used media reports as a main source, the counts remain inaccurate. The report also relied on social media pages attributed to less known non-governmental organisations, such as the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and did not source some cases, resulting in content vagueness.
The report counted 48 killings, including 21 in security raids, six in extra-judicial killings, 19 in aerial raids or artillery shells in North Sinai, in addition to one person killed from torture and one killed by mistake.
However, the report’s detailed lists included only three cases killed in security raids, six in extra-judicial operations, and five in shells in North Sinai.
Meanwhile, the report counted another 13 cases of deaths of prisoners in custody, nine of which were caused by the lack of medical treatment.
In one of the cases, the above-mentioned Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms claimed on Monday that a detainee held against the backdrop of the case publicly known as “Rabaa sit-in dispersal”—which includes photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid “Shawkan”—has died in custody.
The commission said that detainee Ahmed Mohamed Zaher suffered from cancer and was not provided with enough medical care. “He was finally transferred to the prison’s hospital, which does not have the capacity to treat such cases,” the commission said in a statement.
Zaher’s transfer came following a decision by the Cairo Criminal Court on 27 December to release 10 detainees, which Zaher was among, according to a list of names published by state-owned media Akhbar Al-Youm.
El-Nadeem reported more cases of deaths in detention, including the case of a minor reported by the local Al-Shorouk news website on 3 December.
The news said the detained minor died hours after his arrest for being accused of human organ trafficking. Al-Shorouk said that the head of the Giza Investigations Unit, Khaled Shalaby, stated the reason of death as a heart attack, and that the minor died before the doctor arrived.
El-Nadeem also listed several reported cases of torture in prisons including Scorpion, Borg Al-Arab, and several police stations.
