Egypt: “The prisons are full of free people”

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As international condemnation clings to Egypt’s sentencing of three Al-Jazeera journalists, a collection of letters gives voice to the thousands of people detained since last summer’s coup.

Islam Badr is 17 years old. He wrote a letter after being taken away by police as a protest swept through the street he was on. That letter has been reproduced in El-Nadeem Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture’s new e-book, “Letters from Behind Bars.”

"I was on way to play football with some of my friends," he said. Islam ran into a residential building and hid there, waiting for the demonstration to pass through the neighbourhood and for it to be safe again. Instead, the police found him and put him in jail.

"I found in Egypt unexpected injustice. I found the future of scientists being lost. I found the police of my country destroying who stands in front of it, even if he is right. I forbid myself to see an animal treated the way the police treats people. I found that the police hate what God loves."

El-Nadeem, an independent Cairo-based NGO originally established in 1993, has collected a fraction of the tens of thousands of voices – like Islam’s – currently inside Egypt’s prison.

“Letters from Behind Bars” collects the stories Egypt’s ongoing crackdown has left lying in streets and homes. It also gives a more intimate portrayal of the names splashed across international headlines, after three Al-Jazeera journalists were sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison on Monday.

Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste were all given seven-year sentences related to terrorism charges in a packed Cairo courtroom, while Mohamed was handed a further three years and fined for having a single bullet casing in his possession.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry, who was on one-day visit to Cairo the day before, registered his administration’s "serious displeasure" with the Egyptian Foreign Ministry over the verdict, calling it "chilling and draconian", despite offering Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi an estimated US$572 million in renewed military and security aid.

"Condemnation statements will be reeled off and freedom hashtags tweeted out, then all fade away, except for those suffering injustice," tweeted Nancy Okail, executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington DC, herself a defendant in Egypt’s 2013 NGO Trial. "There is nothing more bitter than the feeling of helplessness and inability to reverse injustice."

 

“They believe they are God”

Like Islam Badr, Hossam Meneai, a filmmaker and former detainee, also talks about God when he talks about prison. "I think [the police] are diseased, I swear," he told Equal Times. "They believe they are God and they have the right to do anything they want."

"God makes good things…but they love to do bad things. They love to beat you, to insult you; to be in power."

During his time in a Central Security Forces camp, Meneai saw beatings and routine humiliations, experiencing them himself on several occasions. During one interrogation, a police officer put a gun to Meneai’s head and threatened to kill him.

"But the people inside [the political prisoners’ cell] were amazing," Meneai remembers. "It reminded me of when I was in a sit-in in Tahrir Square during the revolution, in a tent and you’re sitting with people, you know what I mean? There were people from every ideology – Salafists, leftists, Ultras… I saw democracy inside," he smiles at the irony.

Before Monday’s Al-Jazeera ruling, some had expressed hopes that the state would display more leniency in the future. Last Tuesday another Al-Jazeera journalist, Abdullah El-Shamy, was released from prison after 10 months inside and over 100 days on hunger strike.

That being said, these recent perceived displays of lenience follow months of concerted human rights abuses.

According to tallies by WikiThawra and the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), an estimated 41,000 people have been imprisoned or indicted since July. Other counts suggest 16,000.

Stories of torture, forced disappearances and kangaroo court sentences are now commonplace.

Abuses are said to be worst in military facilities. An anonymous letter from Al-Azouly military prison in Ismailia, reproduced by El-Nadeem, describes the liberal use of torture in a place described by one human rights activist and researcher as "Egypt’s darkest secret."

"Torture is done by suspension on doors, pouring of boiling water and boiling oil, electricity," the letter reads. "There are hundreds of detainees who have committed no crime. Several of young detainees were killed under torture."

An in-depth investigation by The Guardian’s Patrick Kingsley found that up to 400 people have disappeared in this shadowy facility in Egypt’s Al-Galaa military camp.

Again there are stories of burning oil, genitals being electrocuted, fierce and never-ending beatings. Families, lawyers and human rights groups do not know the whereabouts of those detained there.

 

Hopes for change

The question human rights organizations may be left asking is how to halt the abuses and end the impunity which allows them to continue.

There has been more talk of presidential pardons and a step-down in repression in Egypt, despite the fact al-Sisi has been more or less silent on activists arrested and detained.

Last week the president did suggest that "reconciliation" could still happen, providing it was with individuals and groups who were not "stained with the blood of the Egyptian people."

At the same time, the Interior Ministry has announced plans to introduce PRISM-style surveillance of social media to combat "dangerous ideas" in society (everything from aiding and abetting terrorism to sarcasm and satire).

Even if the regime decides to pardon and release some detainees, it is creating new ones every week. Indeed, the same day as the Al-Jazeera verdict, 23 protesters had their detentions renewed for defying the Protest Law, 238 Brotherhood supporters were sentenced to between one year and life in prison, while a Coptic journalist was jailed for reporting on sectarian violence in Minya Governorate. Two men were also jailed for one year on sexual harassment charges.

A joint statement by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently warned of a "rights crisis" in Egypt, calling on al-Sisi to "put an end to these rampant abuses," such as mass death sentences meted out to hundreds of reported Brotherhood members or supporters in recent months.

“If Egypt doesn’t carry out credible investigations into the illegal killings and torture, the mechanisms of the UN Human Rights Council should be used to pursue an international investigation," suggested Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Until sufficient pressure is exerted over Egypt’s government, whether from activists, human rights groups or foreign governments looking for reliable partners in a Middle East fast spinning out of their control, repression looks set to continue.

And based on Monday’s verdicts, there will be more detainees, more letters.