Egyptian human rights sources have announced the death of engineer Hamdi Reyad inside Minya’s high-security prison, south of Cairo. Reyad suffered medical neglect. As he was suffering from a heart condition, he underwent open-heart surgery before his arrest.

The sources added that the prison administration refused to let Riad see a doctor and refused to allow the medicine he needed to enter, describing what he was exposed to as slow killing. Reyad is the third detainee to die of medical negligence this October, after detainee Youssef Junaidi and detainee Mustafa Ahmed Hashem.

According to human rights reports, medical negligence in various prisons and detention centres is the main cause of death of at least 980 prisoners in various places of detention during the period between June 2014 and the first quarter of 2020.