Volker Türk criticizes Egypt for making new accusations against prisoners before the end of their punishment. Thus, the Egyptian government is said to circumvent their fundamental rights and prevent them from being released.
Egypt must end the practice allowing long -term arbitrary imprisonment of government critics, said Volker Türk, the UN High Human Rights Commissioner on Tuesday. According to the AFP report, TASR reports this.
Türk: Egyptian government bypasses the right to freedom, proper legal process and equality before the law
Türk criticized the normal practice in Egypt, where new accusations are made against persons before the end of the imprisonment or the legal period of interim detention. The Egyptian authorities thus block their release.
“The Egyptian government must immediately stop this practice ‘rotation’ and release all those who have been exposed to it,” the UN Commissioner said. According to him, they use such a practice to circumvent individual rights for freedom, proper legal process and equality before the law.
Most of the prisoner was not supposed to be detained according to Türk
New accusations of crimes often under anti -terrorist laws are mostly unfounded and similar to those for which people have already been convicted. Most of them were not supposed to be detained or imprisoned at all and, according to Türk, “often related to their legitimate rights to freedom of expression and assembly”.
“This practice has become a tool that the Egyptian government suppresses those he perceives as critics or opponents of his policy,” the UN Commissioner said.
The UN High Commissioner claims that the lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the full range of the problem
Türk pointed out the case of the Egyptian poet Galál al-Beahajri. The police detained him after the prison sentence in 2021 for writing lyrics and poems critical to the government. Since then, he has been accused of similar acts in two different cases based on the counter -terrorist and Criminal Code.
This practice was used by Egypt in many other cases. Türk notes that the lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the complete extent of the problem.
The UN High Commissioner said that the Egyptian authorities must release all those who are arbitrarily detained “for applying their fundamental freedoms or for the defense of human rights.”
