Once again the prison administration failed to transfer Patrick Zaki citing a force majeure event. Patrick was scheduled for a detention renewal session on Sunday June 28 that was meant to take place for the first time before a Criminal Court panel from a counter-terrorism circuit, which sits at the Tora Subofficers Training Institute. But once again we saw a repeat of what has become the norm over the last three months, following the April 28 decision by the head of the Cairo Appellate Court to resume detention renewal sessions without the presence of defendants in criminal cases
Files: Judiciary affairs
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) called on the Ministry of Interior and the Prisons Authority to assume their legal responsibility in providing the simplest forms of human contact in light of the continued suspension of visits for prisoners’ families, consistent with the rights stipulated in the Prison Regulation Law. EIPR demanded that the ministry and the Prisons Authority allow detainees and prisoners to communicate with their families and lawyers.
Until the time of the writing the SSSP has yet to issue its decision on Patrick’s detention, although the prosecutor today has issued permission for Patrick’s family to visit him tomorrow in his new detention place in Tora, Cairo.Patrick Zaki stood before Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) in the Fifth Settlement, Cairo for his second scheduled hearing looking into the state of his detention pending investigation in Mansoura II Administrative Case 7245/2019 registered under Supreme State Security Investigations no. 1766/2019 .
His family were attempting to visit him today, 5 March 2020, on the first regular visit scheduled for pre-trial detainees; only to find that he was once again moved to Tora in Cairo. We have not been able to establish yet which of the various detention facilities within the Tora Prison Complex he will be held in, since he was only moved this morning.
Patrick was subsequently transferred from the prosecutor’s office to Talkha Police Station, but his family was surprised to learn yesterday the 24th of February that he was moved to Mansoura Public Prison. Previously The Public Prosecutor had decided to remand Patrick for 15 further days on his scheduled detention renewal hearing (which took place on Saturday the 22nd of February).
EIPR asks the Public Prosecutor to release Patrick George Zaki immediately, and the investigative authorities to close the investigation and dismiss the case, for we do not see any basis for criminal prosecution.
We ask the Public Prosecutor to release Patrick George Zaki immediately, and the investigative authorities to close the investigation and dismiss the case, for we do not see any basis for criminal prosecution.
EIPR demands the immediate release of Patrick George Zaki without pressing charges, and calls for an investigation into his torture and ill-treatment.
The first of these papers, published today in Arabic (translation forthcoming), documents the most egregious and disproportionate of these measures which has become a routine practice (in particular circumstances) for the police: forced searches of personal mobile phones during arbitrary stop and search operations. This measure has no legal basis at all in Egyptian law, not even in the context of declared emergency. The paper provides a brief narrative of how this practice has evolved from October 2019 and until the end of January 2020.
EIPR stresses the important role judicial institutions could play in punishing the wrongful use of force by police and law enforcement officers. Such actions are vital to stop the rampant cases of death in custody due to beatings and torture. This is especially true given the lack of effective oversight over these facilities by either independent state bodies or the judicial bodies tasked with inspecting them under Article 55 of the constitution and laws regulating the judiciary, prisons, and criminal procedure.
