The Association of Families of Egyptian Detainees (FIDA) has published a new report on the humanitarian conditions in Egyptian prisons. The report highlights conditions of extreme overcrowding used as an instrument of psychological and health punishment by the authorities.
The report “inquires whether this phenomenon has been transformed – within a specific political and social context – from a transient administrative shortcoming into a systematic pattern amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment within the meaning established under international human rights law.”
The total number of detainees in Egypt is estimated at 120,000 persons according to a 2022 estimate drawn from the report of the US Department of State. Of this number, an approximate 80,000 are convicted persons while 40,000 are held in pretrial detention.
The decade some mid-2013 has witnessed an unprecedented expansion in penal infrastructure; bringing the total number of official prisons to 78 according to World Prison Brief of which 17 were established in the period September 2016 to March 2021.
The full report can be read here:
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