6 June 2019; MEMO: Twenty-two-year-old Wael Mahmoud Ali Al-Sibai has been tortured to death inside Wadi Natroun prison in Egypt, according to rights groups.
Al-Sibai was arrested when he was just 16-years-old at the Fath Mosque in Ramses Square where demonstrators gathered just days after the Rabaa massacre in 2013. On 17 August Egypt security forces surrounded the mosque, fired tear gas and shot at the protesters killing 44 and arresting hundreds, including Irish citizen Ibrahim Halawa and his three sisters. Defendants were accused of desecrating the mosque, terrorist activities and destroying public and private property.
On Monday, having served six years of a ten-year sentence, Al-Sibai reportedly called his mother and told her he was dying from the severity of the torture he was being subjected to inside prison. Two days later he was dead.
Human Rights Watch have documented a pattern of systematic torture within Egypt’s prison system where defendants are held in stress positions, raped and given electric shocks.
In May the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK reported that since the July 2013 coup 762 detainees have died from medical negligence, poor conditions and torture in Egypt’s jails.
