Son campaigns for jailed Morsi
Family seeks better prison conditions for ex-Egypt president
CAIRO: Once a month, Abdullah waits outside Cairo’s notorious Tora prison for hours, standing without shade under the blazing Egyptian sun for a chance to see his father.
And almost every time, for five years, he has been denied access to Egypt’s most famous, but least heardfrom prisoner – former president Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist whose divisive year in power ended with a military ouster in 2013.
“I won’t sit on the ground while I wait, it’s not dignified,” he said. “I know they will deny my request, but I still have to try.”
Morsi’s family is campaigning to gain more access to the former president, who since his overthrow has appeared only in court, almost always in a soundproof cage.
The family says the 67yearold Morsi is suffering from ill health due to harsh conditions, including years of solitary confinement.
Last month, they were granted a rare, policesupervised 25minute visit – only the third time they have seen him in five years.
“He has no idea what’s going on in the country. They don’t allow him newspapers or even a pen and paper to write down his thoughts,” Abdullah said.
“He’s in strong spirits but held in total isolation, without sufficient care for his diabetes and high blood pressure, and he sleeps on the floor.
“We want him to be able to have a life – visits and medical care, and eventually freedom.”
Abdullah, 25, studies finance but says he has little chance of finding work in Egypt – employers are scared to hire him, requesting authorisation letters from state security.
He has no passport, only an ID,
and has been refused a driver’s licence. Recently, his older brother Osama, who had already been detained for two years, was sentenced to 10 years’ jail in a mass trial that Amnesty International decried as a “mockery of justice”.
He and the other defendants were convicted of allegedly inciting violence at a proMorsi sitin that police stormed, killing hundreds of protesters.
With most of the family on a terrorism watch list and banned from public life after authorities blacklist
ed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, the campaign to improve conditions of his imprisonment has been run from London.
Morsi, who won Egypt’s first and arguably only free presidential election in 2012, has been imprisoned since he was overthrown by his own defence minister, now President AbdelFattah elSissi.
Morsi still considers himself Egypt’s legitimate president and does not recognise the charges against him, which include treason and incitement to violence.
He is held in a special wing in the sprawling Tora detention complex nicknamed Scorpion Prison. Rights groups say its poor conditions fall far below Egyptian and international standards.
The London campaign, which calls itself the Detention Review Panel, says poor prison conditions and lack of visits for Morsi may meet the standards for torture under international and Egyptian law.
It is also pressing for the international community to intervene to improve Morsi’s conditions. — AP