Maged Al-Hanafy, 35, died in the Wadi Al-Natrun prison complex’s hospital amid allegations of medical negligence. Maged was arrested in December 2013, and his family has reportedly claimed that Al-Hanafy had a number of tumors in his body.
Maged worked as an employee in a petroleum company in Suez and he was charged with using violence following the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
A local rights organization, the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) condemned the death of Al-Hanafy. The local rights organization described the medical negligence in Egypt’s prisons as a “slow killing for detainees through preventing them from obtaining the necessary medication”. Officials in the prison sectors of the Ministry of Interior and the Egyptian judiciary are held responsible for Al-Hanafy’s death said the ECRF.
Moreover, ECRF considered the Egyptian judiciary, which is one of the regime’s suppressive arms, responsible for Al-Hanafy’s death because it refused to act after his family claimed that he was sick.
Another death case occurred in Wadi Al-Natrun prison complex’s hospital, namely, Mohamed Al-Batrawi, 50 years, died on Sunday. Al-Batrawi had tumors in his kidney, according to legal sources. After his health deterioration, he was transferred to hospital from the prison a month ago . Although his family complained several times about the lack of health services in the hospital, but the prison administration didn’t respond except after his health had severely deteriorated. In November 2013, Al-Batrawi was arrested and then sentenced to three years by a military court in Suez.
The Ministry of Interior confirmed on Monday the two incidents but refused to give any further information about the “medical negligence” allegations.
The ECRF reported that 11 cases have died out of medical negligence in Egyptian prisons since the start of 2016.
In the same context, the prosecution opened an investigation into the death of two prisoners in Al-Matariya Police Station. The reasons behind the death of the two prisoners remain unconfirmed.
Matariya Police Station is known as the “slaughterhouse”, where a number of torture cases of detainees who were pending investigations have taken place. Matariya -located in north-eastern Cairo- has witnessed massive confrontations between anti-government protesters and security forces after the military coup in 2013. Since then, Matariya residents have called the area as the “land of fear” as it was targeted by Egyptian security crackdown following days of clashes during demonstrations on the fourth anniversary of the 25 January Revolution.
