Egypt fills its prisons, but don't worry, it'll make more
Egypt's human rights violations are flooding its prisons with more people than they can handle.
Egypt's worsening human rights abuses are not going unnoticed. People are being assaulted on many fronts, from travel restrictions and false imprisonment to limits on freedom of expression, torture and killings.
In an example of this trend, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a presidential decree Jan. 13 designating 100 acres of land for construction of the new Giza Central Prison, a huge structure and its ancillary buildings, in the Giza desert.
Sisi, and Adly Mansour before him, approved 16 new prisons in only 2½ years in response to the detention of thousands of young people. Some facilities are still under construction. The number of prisons in Egypt has risen from 42 to 52 since 2011, according to Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
During the rule of the Military Council, and that of deposed President Mohammed Morsi, Egyptian authorities had asserted that Egyptian prisons were free of political prisoners and detainees. However, current rights groups estimate 10,000 detainees are under investigation or awaiting trial in detention centers and prisons, and Eid wrote in a Jan. 13 Twitter post that Egypt now houses around 60,000 political prisoners.
