His case had already been submitted to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), which had issued an opinion on 08 May 2007 that considered his detention a violation by Egypt of its international commitments and in particular of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Egypt is a party.

The WGAD had also asked the Egyptian government to carry out his immediate release.

Despite this opinion, and despite the seriousness of his health situation, M. AL CHARQAOUI, born on June 04, 1950, an electronic engineer from Taoufiqiya, remains detained so far without due process of law in the prison of Tora Limane.

Mr. Al Charqaoui had been severely tortured by intelligence services for several months while he was held in solitary confinement and is suffering from numerous sequels of the torture he was subjected to.

Furthermore, and since his imprisonment, the authorities continued to make him suffer, within the very prisons where was successively held, from grave abuses and particularly inhuman treatment.

He is forbidden from family visits since the beginning of his imprisonment and his relatives themselves continue to be persecuted to this day. His son Abdul Rahman, 25-year-old was abducted by the intelligence services on 25 February 2008 and his family has still no news of him.

The situation of Mr. Al Charqaoui is particularly worrying. He suffers in particular from a severe slipped disc (hernia) and various digestive diseases that require proper treatment and which can not be assured in the prison hospital.

His health continued to deteriorate seriously in the last few months and the lack of medical care as well as his conditions of detention are likely today to cause him irreparable harm, which is why our organization has again seized various special procedures of the United Nations to draw their attention to the seriousness of the situation of Mr. Al Charqaoui.