مركز ماعت للدراسات الحقوقية والدستورية

Suicide Attempts and Hunger Strike in Damanhore Jail

13/02/2007

Maat Center for Judicial and Constitutional Studies received, as the coordinator of the Egyptian Network to defend daintiness, a number of grievances from the detainees in Damanhore jail in which they describe the bad treatment that they suffer from in the jail.

Wael Hessen Ali ,Ashraf Mohamed Nour Eldeen ,Sameh Elsaeed ,Mohamed Ali peipers Mohamed Baeomy Mahmood , Ebraheem Eldesoky Mohamed ,and many others of this homeland’s young men who are staying behind the walls of this jail and other detention camps and whom we do not know any thing about ,except for some appeals that we receive through their families to secure them from the daily torture inside the walls of the jails.

This one of the yells that we receive from a group of the detainees in Damanhour Public Jail in which a group of the Egyptian young men who do not commit any sin to be punished for, except that they are the sons of this homeland and it is their fate to live under a system just governed by Martial laws.

According to the reports of the detainees’ families, the jail’s administration insisted on the policy of intensifying repression and torture especially against the detainees in wards number one and two, since October the last. They all of a sudden, seized their clothes, shoes, money, covers, beds, chairs, pens, books, and the Koraan, etc. They did not leave for them in this sever cold but few clothes which do not cover all their skinny bodies which experience too much torture ,either from security officers or from the officers of this jail’s administration .

The policy of this jail’s administration reached the extend of preventing them form leaving their few meters –rooms for many weeks except for few hours , which do not exceed two hours daily. Besides, they deprive them of food except for the crumbs thrown to them from above the doors without any respect to their human dignity .Also the administration decrease the visiting hours down to few minutes in order to cut all their relations with their families and with the external world.

Because of these practices that do not respect the least human rights, the international charters and the Egyptian law, some of the detainees in these two wards made unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide as they may find in death their release from this daily torture and therefore they might leave a message to be delivered to every one who is responsible for or who participated in the violations experienced against them even if his participation is only that he keeps silent or ignores what happens to them.

It is not surprising to find that the reaction of the jail’s administration towards these attempts was nothing but to continue covering these crimes, so that the situation remains the same, the supervision remains absent, and these criminals remains without litigation or punishment.

Before these scenes, which cannot be expressed with words an urgent question arises, for the benefit of …....whom these crimes committed? For the benefit of whom these young men and other detainees of this homeland’s sons ruined without any sin inside the gloominess of the jails and detention camps according to illegitimate detention resolutions ?For the benefit of whom the human dignity, the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitutions and international charters are violated ?

This will never be for the benefit of this homeland. Are the system’s mouthing steps of reform and supervision become absent, or that ignoring these scenes is an intended policy to serve other interests above the interest of this homeland ?What is the source from which the system get the legitimacy to protect these practices?

If some one committed a crime he has to be litigated before his ordinary judge .This is the minimum guarantees of fair trail granted by the international charters and the constitutions, elsewhere any system that do not respect this principle is in no way legitimate.

Now as these detainees have announced their hunger strike since more than two weeks, hoping that their attitude would be like a message sent to every responsible person who is in charge of supervising what happens inside the walls of jails and detention camps. As for our role ,we send their apple to the president ,the prosecutor ,PM, the Minister of Interior ,the Minister of Justice the head of prisons’ department , the Egyptian judges, members of the Peoples Assembly and the Shura Counsel ,and the civil committee institutions , , . The message sent to all of us, and we are all responsible for what would happen to these detainees if we choose silence.

“Coward eyes do not sleep”

Maat for juridical and constitutional studies

you, visitor no.,