Egypt Watch

Egyptian political detainee Tamer Gamal El-Din passes away

Human rights organisations have announced the death of an Egyptian detainee in Minya Prison. The prison administration transferred the deceased to a hospital without notifying his family of his death, and let them go to visit him at the time of the regular visit where they found out he had died.

The Egyptian Network, We Record, and the Al-Shehab Centre, announced the death of the detainee Tamer Fikri Gamal El-Din (50-years-old), a preacher at a mosque in Kerdasa, Giza, who was serving a 10-year prison sentence.

The Al-Shehab Centre held the Ministry of Interior responsible for the death, and demanded an investigation into its circumstances, and the release of all detainees.

Tamer is the third death in an Egyptian prison this February, after the death of detainee Mohamed Abdel Hamid Ahmed Abdel Hafez, after his health deteriorated after he went into a diabetic coma. Security forces had arrested Abdel Hafez in May 2015 along with five others, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017.

The sentence was reduced to 15 years in 2019, in a trial that lacked standards of justice, according to We Record. In 2021 60 detainees died inside prisons and various detention centres, including 52 political prisoners and eight criminals, including six children, in addition to 277 women subjected to detention and enforced disappearance. In 2020 there were 79 recorded cases of medical negligence in various prisons and detention centres in Egypt, according to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights. During the past seven years, about 774 detainees died in various detention facilities, including 73 in 2013, 166 in 2014, 185 in 2015, 121 in 2016, 80 in 2017, 36 in 2018, and 40 in 2019.