A cry of a detainee .. 8 questions tell the story of detainees' message to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Al Jazeera Net-Special *

Between the shocked of the letter and those who reject it and question the proportion of the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who saw it as a political maneuver of the group in the hope of releasing thousands of detainees from its children; reactions differed on the message sent by a group of young detainees to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last Monday, the media leaked a message from inside Tora Prison addressed to the leaders of the group, revealing the suffering of the political prisoners in Egypt, and demands the leaders of the group inside and outside the prisons to move with all their might to resolve their crisis with the military and the regime in Egypt, and not hesitate to Taking a step back saves them the remnants of a group, and keeps them little of the rest of their youth.

According to the letter (which we have provided at the bottom of the report), it was prepared and acknowledged by the wording, content, text and content of approximately 350 young people, most of whom are from Tora Prison (south of Cairo), and the rest who respond to this prison on or on exams. Attendance to hearings of the trial, and those who agreed to its content and content without access to the final version and text; because of the difficulty of communication with other prisons; they are more than a thousand young people from different prisons in Egypt.

Among the highlights of the letter, "We young people acknowledge that the prison has become the most influential on our thoughts and attitudes, and not evidence from you long ago, it is young people who entered the prison without any thought or direction and formed his thought and direction within the prison, including those who had thought and direction and lost the prison thought And give him another thought, but the most widespread aspects are those who entered the prison carrying the ideology of the Brotherhood and extracted from them prison grab, and give them another thought or left without any ideas, the Brotherhood becomes the most affected by the length of the crisis and the length of the crisis.

The letter added to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, "We reject all the filming of the situation in the prisons of the steadfastness and steadfastness and high vigor through the small leaders deployed inside the prisons, and God is far from the real picture, they know very well that the situation is contrary to what they say, but that Many of those leaders are cursing the prison and the oppression that we have become and tweeting with words of steadfastness and steadfastness contrary to what they harbor inside. "

On the acceptance of the members of the group and its supporters of the idea of ​​reconciliation with the regime, the message said: Their anger, while history mentions that you took a step back and kept your members and your description, is better than history reminds you that you persist in stubbornness against the military and the regime does not see or plan to support him and reach a land docked on him, and perished those who are with you.

In light of the controversy caused by the letter, Al Jazeera Net sought to verify the authenticity of this message, through communication with a number of detainees in more than one prison, and also contacted some lawyers and jurists who defend the detainees and in direct contact with them, but prefer not to name their names in order to protect them , And will only publish their answers.

From the owners of this letter?
According to the findings of Al-Jazeera Net understand a number of young detainees from within the Islamic trend (Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Group and Salafists) and also from outside the Islamic trend, especially independents who do not follow any political organizations, although the numbers of the Brotherhood that signed or approved the message is the ratio The least compared to the numbers of young detainees from outside the Muslim Brotherhood.

How was this message coordinated between the detainees?
It is known that the prisons have periods of daily exercise, which may be up to an hour a day or more, and there are periods of movement between the different wards, and other gathering of students arrested during the performance of examinations, as well as gathering in trial sessions and they all go in one deportation car to go back and forth, or presence During the detention of the prosecution or the court, which allows many detainees to meet with each other, which actually led to some kind of communication, consultation and dialogue between these young detainees.

According to the same sources, the basic idea of ​​these messages has been in circulation since late 2016, and has been the debate and the broadest debate since then about the feasibility and the impact of the exit of such messages and the expected degree of interaction with them, and most of the views argue that there is no real point in producing these messages, although There was near agreement that most of the detainees were suffering enough to accept any move that would help them out of the prison, even if it included a concession by them or their representatives abroad.

Recently, with the prolonged detention, dozens of detainees in a number of prisons agreed on the form of this letter from the main prisons, such as Mazraa prisons, sentenced and Lehman and reception in Tora Prison Complex, in addition to the prisons of Fayoum, Beni Suef and Minya, and communicated through what is available informally For communication, as well as through some parents.

How did the message come out to the media?
The letter was written by a young detainee by hand, and then went out through the families during a visit, and then leaked to the media by some jurists and media workers, before it was published on the communication sites, but unfortunately many media refused to publish that letter at first, as Anonymous, and in the light of some skepticism, but with the proliferation of very large interaction with it has been circulated in some Arab media, whether pro or anti-regime.

Were there discussions or disagreements among the detainees regarding the letter?
Of course, this took time for discussion due to differing opinions and trends, and after the ideas crystallized the consensus among a group of detainees reached about 1350 detainees on the total ideas put forward after reaching the final versions.

Of course, these signatures were implicit and not actual; given the security conditions that everyone knows.

Quoting former detainees, this message may have helped the difficult situation inside the prisons, and what the detainees are subjected to, as well as their families, where the visit costs several thousand pounds, and these sources talked about the great differences between the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and their youth inside the prisons, and the existence of a crisis of confidence In light of the uncertain future and what young people see as a total failure of the group in the past six years.

Does security have a role in this initiative or mission?
What we know very well about the message about the tragic conditions of the detainees is that they have absolutely nothing to do with any security or intelligence agencies. Change or in the presence of any movement that may contribute to their removal from detention, which prompted them to formulate this message they sent to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and demand the need for a solution.

However, the sources did not rule out security knowledge of the content of the message and satisfaction with the circulation, but they deny that it has a role in it or exert pressure to adopt it, and do not know so far the security position.

In this regard, the sources were keen to confirm that the letter is not an expression of surrender or defeat completely and completely, and it did not contain any indication to that, unlike another initiative circulated at the same time and attributed to the families of some detainees, and asked the security to release their children in exchange for apology and pledge No political action, as well as a $ 5,000 donation to Viva Egypt.

For his part, Ahmed al-Arabi, a human rights researcher at the Egyptian Coordination for Freedoms, does not rule out that Egyptian security seeks to exploit the message to cause a rift between the Brotherhood and detainees, pointing out that this was evident during the regime's coverage of the message.

What is the map of Tora Prisons? How many political detainees are there? What percentage of the Brotherhood among them?

Tora prison group consists of several prisons: reception - investigation - Scorpio 1 - Scorpio 2 - farm - farm extension. Of course, the numbers of cells and wards vary from place to place, and of course it is very difficult to count the numbers of wards or detainees inside them, but the number of detainees inside all Tora prisons - according to approximate figures - more than six thousand detainees, according to our figures.

According to the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, the percentage of Brotherhood detainees does not exceed at most 35% of the total number of political detainees in Egyptian prisons.This percentage decreases or varies from one prison to another and from one region to another, depending on the occasional releases from time to time.

Egyptian prisons have witnessed similar initiatives. And what was her fate?

There are no integrated initiatives in a comprehensive sense within the prisons. July 2013 There were attempts to test the pulse of some initiatives that came out of here or there, but they did not rise to a clear-cut initiative that could be taken seriously, positively and fully.

At the beginning of 2015, the National Security Agency put forward the so-called “repentance declarations” in Tora prisons, claiming to renounce violence and disown the Brotherhood. This initiative, according to what we monitored and documented, was not signed by any of the Muslim Brotherhood detainees, and most of those who signed it Those who signed the "repentance affirmations" were placed in one ward at Tora Prison. Strangely, they have not been released yet. Some have even been sentenced to death with heavy sentences such as life.

They were given maximum facilities such as increasing the number of hours of exercise and visits allowed, and not being subjected to any torture or security harassment, but they hoped to get out after signing repentance statements, but nothing has happened so far.

The authors of the recently issued letter assert that it is different and is not based on an initiative submitted by security, but what was agreed upon is to demand the leadership of the opposition abroad, especially the Brotherhood, to present a real initiative to help them out of prison.

Does security exploit these initiatives to cause confusion and conflicts between opponents of power?

Of course, the security authorities seek to try to exploit such initiatives, theses or distress for their benefit, and seek to try to cause confusion and reality among the detainees, especially since there are differences among all detainees in prisons, whether in orientations or ideas, or on their vision to manage the scene, or the way and nature of the waiver Possible, or even on their position on the issue of reviews, other than the existence of personal differences between some detainees.
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* Liberation of Abdel Rahman Aboul Gheit
* Participated in the preparation from Cairo: Wael Hosni and Abdul Rahman Mohammed and Mohammed Seif Eddin and Karim Adel.