Cairo: 14 January 2021

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) revealed today that there are many detainees who have not seen sunlight nor interrogated since hearing their statements on 22 September 2020 before being held in Giza Prison, AKA “10.5 km Prison”, which is located at one of the security camps. These detainees haven’t been interrogated nor did they appear before a judge or a prosecutor for more than four months (110 days) since their incarceration until today.

ANHRI announces that it has obtained the names of 9 detainees, among a greater number of those who were randomly arrested after the 20 September 2020 Protests. Most of them are from Giza governorate’s Atfih area whose villages witnessed the angriest and most outraged demonstrations during the 20 September 2020 incidents; as most of those demonstrators are the workers of the recently-suspended cement brick factories for which Atfih & Al-Saff are well-known, leaving many workers jobless, a matter which consolidates the belief that they were arrested in this way to retaliate against them.

This major scandal comes to add new evidence of the undermining of justice and the rule of law in Egypt. ANHRI regrets to announce that this new catastrophe comes with the knowledge of the Public Prosecutor, who has not stopped such a farce. He didn’t release the detainees or even punish those responsible for their detention all this long period, but rather he remained silent regarding their formalistic on-paper detention renewal for more than 100 days, despite the fact that he is the one in charge of the rule of law and protecting members of society, which makes him primarily responsible for this disaster.

ANHRI said, “We learned that there are detainees in large numbers in May 15 and Giza’s 10.5 km Prisons, but we did not imagine that their detention would continue for many months without appearing before a prosecutor or a judge, without being released, although the Public Prosecutor already knows that they are accused in Case No. 880 of 2020. We so far have obtained 9 of the victims’ names, and we seek to document more names and monitor more cases of the undermining of justice, until it is the time to be achieved in the country by holding those responsible accountable.”

This new scandal, furthermore, exposes those liars who are complicit in the curbing of citizens’ rights and freedoms along with those who claim that the Egyptian government respects human rights. What kind of human rights are those which remain silent on the incarceration of citizens without investigation and without hearing their statements for more than 100 days and which wastes their freedoms under the on-paper detention renewal which undermines justice and severely defies the rule of law.