Yasser Essawy (right) before Cairo Criminal Court In late March 2016, Yasser Essawy Ahmed Essawy, a sales representative detained since his arrest in October 2013, was urgently hospitalised to receive surgery in a Cairo hospital. Disregarding the doctor’s recommendation, the prison personnel refused the continuation of his hospitalisation after his surgery and sent him back to prison before he had time to properly recover. Even though he was put in the medical section of Tora prison, Yasser Essawy, 41 years old, has been continuously refused medical care since. Hence, his family reports that his state continues to decline, putting his life at risk. As a consequence, Alkarama solicited the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health (UNSRH) to ask the Egyptian authorities to guarantee that Yasser Essawy is granted appropriate medical care and hospitalised again, if need be.

Credit: Thomas Hawk/Flickr Egyptian Homeland Security raided Mohamed Mohamed Sadiq Ayyad’s house and arrested him on 13 January 2016. Secretly detained for weeks, he was repeatedly tortured before being charged under various accusations, without the assistance of a lawyer. Still detained to date, he was only allowed to see his relatives for few minutes and his health state continues to deteriorate because he is refused medical care. Fearing for his life, his family turned to Alkarama that sent an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (UNSRT) to ask the Egyptian authorities to guarantee his mental and physical state and to investigate his reports of torture.

In March 2016, Alkarama sent two communications to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the disappearances in November 2015 and February 2016 of two Egyptian students, Ahmed Ihab Mohamed Al Naggar and Mohammed Mohammed Abdelmotaleb Al Husseini following their arrests by the authorities. While Ahmed was reportedly seen in detention in early February 2016, without official confirmation however, Mohammed’s whereabouts remain unknown to his relatives to date and both students are at high risk of being tortured while in secret detention, either in retaliation against their alleged political affiliations or to force them to confess to crimes.

Alkarama has just solicited the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (UNSRT) regarding the continuous detention of 10 young women - most of whom are students -, since their arrest in Damietta streets on 5 May 2015. While they were peacefully demonstrating, Sara Mohamed Ramadan, Habiba Shata, Esraa Abdo Farhat, Aya Hossam Al Shehata, Fatima Ayad, Mariam Tork, Fatima Tork, Rawda Khater, Sara Hamdi Anwar and Kholod El Fallaghy, were arrested and detained incommunicado for several days during which they were tortured and then indicted. Now detained in Port-Said prison in harsh conditions, they are facing trial and could be sentenced on the basis of documents that they signed without the possibility of reading them.