Rizq was arrested on his way back to work, on 27 August 2014, after having taken part in a peaceful demonstration in the port of Damietta, 200km north of Cairo. Intercepted by police officers, he was forcibly brought to Damietta's second police station, where he was secretly detained for two days. During his administrative detention, several police officers violently punched Rizq in the face and beat him with sticks on the feet in reprisal for his participation to the demonstration and his opposition to the government. He was subsequently charged with participating in an "unauthorised demonstration" under the widely-criticised 2013 law on protests n°107 and moved to the Kafr Saad Police Station.

There, he was ill-treated again to the extent that the authorities urgently called a doctor, who, acknowledging the torture that he had suffered, prescribed him a medical treatment. Upon his return to the police station, however, the police officers confiscated the treatment. Detained in deplorable conditions, Rizq was unable to recover properly.

A week later, he was transferred to Gamasa prison, where, held in appalling conditions for another two months, he was tortured again, this time by the Head of the prison and his deputy. Amongst others, they put him in an isolated cell and beat him with belts and sticks, before asking other prisoners to assault him. As a consequence of his ordeal, including the grave after-effects of his torture, Rizq's condition aggravated and, still untreated, he began to develop infections resulting from the lack of hygiene in Gamasa prison.

Ultimately he was moved to the Wadi el-Natrum prison where he is still arbitrarily detained to date in a badly ventilated and overcrowded cell, where many prisoners have developed infections – particularly scabies – and where the prison personnel keeps on confiscating the medications brought by their families.

Concerned about his health and unable to obtain solutions at the local level, his family turned to Alkarama who sent an urgent appeal to the SRT to ask the Egyptian authorities to guarantee Mohamed Saïd Rizq's physical and mental health, to duly investigate the several reports of torture made by the victim and to bring those responsible to justice. The authorities should put an end to the violent, systematic and widespread crackdown on all kind of dissent and take effective measures to eliminate the practice of torture and ill-treatment in custody and in detention centres.

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