The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Egyptian Network for Human Rights warned of the deterioration of the health of the detained lawyer Ibrahim Metwally.

Metwally’s family announced that he is in bad need of treatment because he has been suffering from prostate hyperplasia for over a year, which requires urgent surgery to avoid serious complications that could be life-threatening and to relax the extreme pain he suffers in his solitary cell.

EIPR said that Metwally was not provided with medication and that the prison prevents him from getting them on his private account. In a statement, EIPR added that Metwally’s detention conditions have quickened his health deterioration physically and mentally, as he has been put in pretrial detention since September 2017 in Scorpion Prison. Metwally’s lawyer asserted that he is put in solitary confinement and deprived of his lawful rights including being outside in the sun, having access to books and newspapers and warm water. ENHR reported that the Supreme State Security Prosecution addressed two letters to Scorpion Prison to refer Metwally to a specialist, but the prison ignored the letters.

Metwally was arrested in Cairo Airport on 10 September 2017, while he was travelling to Geneva in response to an official invitation to attend the 113 convention at the UN Human Rights Council as the chairman of the association against forced disappearance, which he established after his son, Omar, was arrested and disappeared in July 2013. Metwally was ordered into pretrial detention in case 900 of 2017. And after finishing the maximum period, he was transferred into a National Security premises before resurfacing before the Supreme State Security, which inserted him on case 1470 of 2019. Again, Metwally was inserted in a new case in September 2020 after he got parole in the previous one.