Parties and rights groups back ‘prison strikes,’ demand end to pretrial detention
Seven leftist parties and political movements expressed full solidarity with what they termed “the battle of prisoners and detainees striking with their empty bodies as a final recourse to protest.” The statement follows growing reports of prisoner protests and hunger strikes across several detention facilities, as revealed in recent statements by rights groups and detainees’ families.
In a statement issued Saturday, the parties described the resort to hunger strikes as a “blatant indictment of an entire system that entrenches political repression and uses detention to intimidate society, erode public space, and eliminate national opposition.”
Connecting the prison protests to broader national conditions, the parties described the situation as “an organic extension of economic and social policies crushing the hard-working majority, where mass impoverishment and the sale of public assets go hand in hand with the suppression of freedoms, the stifling of dissident voices, and the nationalization of the political sphere.”
Signatories to the statement include the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, the Egyptian Socialist Party, the Egyptian Communist Party, the Revolutionary Socialists movement, the Bread and Freedom Party (under establishment), the Karama Party, and the National Conciliation Party.
Reports of prison protests first emerged on Oct. 2 through a statement released by 17 families of detainees at the 10th of Ramadan Reform and Rehabilitation Center, alongside supporting signatories. The families cited “deeply alarming” reports from inside the facility, including “physical assaults on detainees, the use of tear gas in holding areas, and resulting injuries.”
According to the statement, families also received information regarding the punitive transfer of several detainees to distant facilities without notifying relatives or legal counsel, amid severe restrictions on direct communication.
The families emphasized that the events at the 10th of Ramadan facility “cannot be viewed in isolation,” noting reports of hunger strikes, visit restrictions, self-harm, and suicide attempts at other detention centers.
Among the signatories were writers, activists, and families of high-profile detainees, including economic expert Abdel Khalek Farouk, screenwriter Omar Salah Marie, Al Manassa cartoonist Ashraf Omar, political activist Mohamed Adel, labor activist Shady Mohamed, lawyer Mohamed Abu El-Diyar, Civil Democratic Movement co-founder Yehia Hussein Abdel Hadi, researcher Ismail Alexandrani, and political activist Ahmed Douma.
After a full week that may have involved verifying the information contained in the families’ statement, ten human rights organizations confirmed in a joint statement on Friday, Oct. 9 that they had documented protest actions across Minya, 10th of Ramadan, Abu Zaabal, Badr, and New Valley prisons. Reported actions included preparations for hunger strikes, meal refusals, and boycotts of investigation and trial sessions.
The organizations also documented courtroom protests, including “detainees’ refusal, during one hearing, to leave the courthouse holding cell and appear before the court,” in protest at their continued detention and demanding the implementation of provisions reducing pretrial detention periods under the new Criminal Procedure Law.
The rights groups noted that one defendant was sentenced to a year in prison for “disrupting courtroom proceedings,” raising concerns over retaliatory judicial penalties.
The joint statement further documented security force interventions to suppress protests at the 10th of Ramadan center. Detainees’ belongings were confiscated and participating prisoners, including researcher Ismail Alexandrani, were punitively transferred to other cells or distant facilities. Rights groups demanded an urgent, independent investigation to determine whether force or assaults were used.
All statements, from families, rights groups, and political parties, identified the direct catalyst for the prison unrest as the last-minute postponement of Criminal Procedure Law No. 174 of 2025, just hours before its scheduled implementation on Oct. 1.
The families held legislative and executive authorities responsible for “giving detainees and their families hope by positioning shorter pretrial detention limits as a key provision of the law,” stating that authorities must bear “responsibility for the outrage caused by crushing that hope.”
“Postponing a law does not postpone suffering; a detainee cannot put their life on hold for a year, nor can a family,” the statement read, calling attention to the toll on families deprived of primary breadwinners, women managing heavy burdens, and women denied the opportunity to start families.
The human rights groups also stressed that delaying the new law “does not diminish a detainee’s right to release once they exceed the statutory limit for pretrial detention.” They emphasized that the current Criminal Procedure Law sets maximum limits: six months for misdemeanors, 18 months for felonies, and two years for crimes punishable by death or life imprisonment.
The organizations underscored that no legal exception permits indefinite pretrial detention, identifying the root crisis as administrative circumvention through “rotation”—detaining individuals after release in new cases based on the same underlying allegations.
Signatories to the joint rights statement include the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Refugees Platform in Egypt, the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, the Committee for Justice, the El Nadeem Center, the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, EgyptWide for Human Rights, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
In their statement, political parties held the government and the Ministry of Interior “fully criminally and politically responsible for the safety and health of every detainee.” They rejected the transformation of pretrial detention into “an extrajudicial punitive tool” and condemned “complicity with malicious rotation tactics that render detention indefinite and permanent.”
The parties dismissed official discourse surrounding political openings, national dialogue, or human rights strategies as “hollow claims so long as cells remain crowded with workers, youth, activists, thinkers, and defenders of land and livelihoods.”
All three statements concluded with urgent demands directed at authorities, calling for an immediate end to punitive measures, including bans on exercise and visits, solitary confinement, arbitrary transfers, and restrictions on food and medicine inside prisons.
Detainees’ families urged the Prosecutor General to open an independent investigation into allegations of force, tear gas, and physical assault, while allowing independent medical teams to examine detainees, document injuries, and provide care. They also called on the Public Prosecution and the National Council for Human Rights to perform immediate field inspections.
Political parties demanded that prison doors be opened to independent delegations from the Lawyers Syndicate, the Medical Syndicate, and human rights groups to inspect “crimes of medical negligence and inhumane detention conditions,” while families urged rights organizations to conduct field visits rather than limiting action to public statements.
The combined demands called for the immediate, unconditional release of all pretrial detainees who have exceeded statutory limits, the execution of pending release orders, an end to pretrial detention in political cases, a halt to “rotation” practices, and a “comprehensive, unreserved amnesty for all prisoners of conscience and social movement figures.”