Doaa Abdel Latif - Cairo
Egyptian journalist Samhi Mustafa does not find a justification for his child, who always asks him why he is absent at night. A long explanation is needed. The father spent five years in prison in the fourth operation room. After his release, he was surprised by a prison of another kind.
Every day Mustafa leaves his home in Giza governorate and travels more than 200 kilometers to spend 12 hours inside the Beni Suef police station from 6 pm to 6 am as part of the precautionary measures imposed on him after his release from prison.
You are my son: Baba Bess you are Khayf taking a vacation from work. |
Conquer .... Wrench .... deprive your children and your wife and ruin your life |
The same suffering is suffered by political activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who spent five years as a punishment for participating in a peaceful demonstration, and is waiting for another five years of overnight at the police station 12 hours a day.
"I am glad to be released from jail, but unfortunately I am not free, not even in the substandard sense of the usual freedom in our country, I am peace myself every day to humiliated and humiliating her name Surveillance ".
Complementary measures or punishment in Egypt require that prisoners or detainees held in custody - who are released to security control - be required to spend a number of hours in a police station every day or week.
These measures are used as an alternative to pre-trial detention, or imposed as a supplementary sentence along with a prison sentence.
During 2018, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights monitored the release of 174 defendants on political grounds with precautionary measures by requiring them to periodically hesitate to police stations.
| The observer spends 12 hours a day in a police station (Al Jazeera) |
Contrary to the law
The penalty for monitoring is regulated by Law No. 99 of 1945, which obliges the Controller to determine for the Police Department the person who wants to take the place of residence for the period of observation, which begins at sunset and ends with the sunrise.
In April, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) issued a legal study entitled "Place of Residence Police Department: Situation under Police Control".
The study confirmed that the failure to give the person under surveillance the ability to choose the area in which he wants to reside throughout the duration of the surveillance is contrary to the law governing the situation under the supervision of the police and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The law provides that if a person under surveillance can not take a place of residence or take a place that police believe is difficult to monitor, the police department may appoint an overnight shelter for the observer, such as a private association.
The law permits night-time accommodation to be the police station as the last resort for locating night surveillance, which the police may not resort to until exhaustive alternatives have been exhausted.
Crush the opposition
Amnesty International also said in a report that the Egyptian authorities are increasingly resorting to measures described as arbitrary and excessive, to monitor activists as a means of harassing them and in some cases as a way to lock them up again.
"Abuse of surveillance has become the latest power tool in Egypt to crush dissenting voices," said Najia Bounaim, deputy campaign director at Amnesty International's regional office.
She added that the Egyptian authorities punished the activists by imposing conditions of excessive control, in some cases laughable, and in some cases to the level of deprivation of liberty.
Violations against the monitors in the police stations are numerous. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) examined them, such as forcing the observer to perform forced labor inside or outside the department, and not providing the appropriate place for the sleeping person to sleep and depriving him of his personal belongings.
The positions of the founder of the April 6 opposition movement Ahmed Maher, during his experience with the three-year surveillance, were reported.
Maher wrote on his social networking site Twitter that he was very tired during the surveillance period, and the police department refused to call a doctor or go to the hospital.
Maher was also deported to the Public Prosecutor's Office and detained for two consecutive days due to a delay of only one-third of the hour due to the circumstances of his mother's illness.
| After years of imprisonment, opponents in Egypt find themselves in front of another prison (Reuters) |
Half a detainee
For his part, said the former parliamentarian Dr. Ezzeddin al-Koumi that "the original objective of the observation is to ensure that the observer does not commit any new violations, and to ensure discipline and good conduct and conduct."
However, the Egyptian regime does not abide by the provisions of the Law of Observation, which is not intended in accordance with the Komi, which considered precautionary measures as a punishment for the torture and reprisals of released political prisoners, which is often more bitter than the original punishment.
He added to the island Net that officers in the police deliberately humiliate and humiliate the observer by forcing him to clean the toilets of the section and rebuked and insulted and imprisoned in cells resembling wooden stalls.
He added that "this punishment makes the released half free and half a detainee, the control restricts the movement of the observer and difficult to find a job and seek to earn a living."