Activists and legal experts criticized on Sunday the favoritism being shown towards Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, the sons of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, who are in custody in the Tora prison complex pending investigation. The activists demanded that prison regulations be applied to all prisoners without distinction or discrimination.
Many of the icons of corruption from the former regime are currently locked up in Tora prison for crimes ranging from inciting the murder of peaceful protesters to financial corruption and using their official position for their own gain.
Egyptian lawyer Issam al-Islambouli said that prison regulations do not allow the use of mobile phones or plasma screens inside the prison. Al-Islambouli said Interior Minister Mansour al-Essawy, Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, and the prison service director general were responsible for the violations inside Tora Prison.
Director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, Khaled Ali, said that “favoritism among prisoners is a violation of internal regulations”. He went on to say that regulations in Egyptian prisons are based on a principle he described as "he who pays more."
Rawda Ahmed, the deputy director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said that in the Egyptian prison system, money and power rule and determine favoritism among prisoners. "The power of money dominates in Egyptian prisons and is the main factor in this case, and the way in which [prisoners] are treated depends on it," she said.
Meanwhile, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Ahmed Ragheb, criticized what he described as “class distinction” between prisoners, which continues to be in place even after the 25 January revolution.
“Throughout history, Egyptian prisons have suffered from an obvious, illegal, systematic and explicit distinction between inmates,” he said. “Our experience in these cases confirms there is no equality among inmates, whether they are detainees pending investigation or those already charged and sentenced to prison.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
