Egypt holds 18 000 without trial
2008-05-28 07:22
Cairo - About 18 000 people are being held in Egyptian jails without charge or trial, says Amnesty International, two days after emergency laws allowing their continued detention were renewed.
"Some 18 000 people continue to be detained without charge or trial on the orders of the Interior Ministry under the emergency law," the London-based right group said in its annual report.
Most were held in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, with hundreds reportedly sick with ailments including tuberculosis and skin diseases, it said.
Amnesty said that many detainees were still being held despite their acquittal by courts and repeated orders for their release.
On Monday, Egypt extended for another two years the 27-year-old state of emergency that allowed detainees to be held without charge or trial, in a move slammed by rights groups as anti-constitutional.
The state of emergency was first imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of president Anwar Sadat and had been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.
Last year, Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if a new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.
An Egyptian inmate said on Sunday that 280 prisoners at Borg el-Arab jail, near the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, had started a hunger strike over their continued detention despite repeated court orders for their release.