“From the moment we arrive at the prison, we spend an average of 8 to 12 hours enduring heat, fatigue, searches, and humiliation just to sit with our children for only twenty minutes, and then we return home exhausted. Imagine this being your life for years and years, an endless nightmare. Our lives and our children’s lives are wasted in prisons, and all we want is for them to be released. Please, let our voices be heard.”

With the scorching heat in Egypt, the rising economic costs, and the burden on the families of prisoners, alongside more than a decade of thousands of political detainees languishing in Egyptian jails, families and their children have reached a breaking point. Promises of presidential pardons have not been fulfilled, and the reconsideration of the pretrial detention law remains stuck in parliament. Stories and letters are emerging about some prisoners threatening suicide due to their despair, while their families suffer outside.

The families of political prisoners in Egypt do not have the luxury of despair as they fight to save their loved ones’ lives. Despite the frustrations and hardships, they have come together to establish an initiative demanding the release of all prisoners of conscience to resume a normal life after a long hiatus from it.

The Voice of the Families

Journalist and activist Abdel Rahman El-Gendy, who was imprisoned for six years, has been prioritizing the plight of political prisoners and supporting the initiative since its launch on July 2nd.

In statements to Daraj El-Gendy mentioned that according to the families of the detainees, the idea for the initiative formed during their long waits in line to visit their loved ones in prison. They began to document their experiences on social media sporadically.

El-Gendy added: “The idea of establishing an initiative and an official Facebook page came about to appeal to the authorities and those involved in the national dialogue in Egypt to take a positive step towards presidential pardons and to address the pretrial detention law. They are ready for any conditions and guarantees from the current political administration in exchange for the release of their loved ones.”

He revealed that within a week of establishing the initiative, 8,000 families had signed the initiative’s form, identifying themselves as families of political prisoners. In his view, this number is staggering and indicative of the dire situation and the families’ desperate hope in the initiative.

El-Gendy knows what it means to be forgotten within four walls, with the only clear sign of life being the stories, suffering, and deaths of your peers in the cell, despite your inability to change anything, knowing it’s not a nightmare because a nightmare is temporary, unlike indefinite detention.

He said, “I witnessed prisoners committing suicide inside their cells due to psychological pressure. When I was imprisoned in ‘Tora Maximum Security 2,’ one prisoner hanged himself in solitary confinement because of the horrific torture he endured.”

El-Gendy still receives leaked letters or verbal messages from his friends currently in detention, stating, “All their letters talk about death as the only way to escape the torment and to relieve their families from the burden of visiting them in prisons. My friend Ayman Moussa, who was a source of joy and hope for me in prison, is now suffering from severe depression and has lost hope in life after receiving a final 15-year sentence for participating in a protest in 2013. Omar Mohamed Ali also told his mother that he is mentally prepared for his death as it seems like the only way to lift the burden off her.”

Inhuman Prison Conditions

Numerous videos have been leaked showing the inhumane conditions inside Egyptian prisons, such as the absence of lighting and ventilation, the lack of separation between the toilet and the living area, and the lack of utensils and cleaning supplies. Overcrowded cells severely limit the possibilities for comfortable sleeping or sitting positions. Here, we are not even talking about the other violations related to torture, but about the basic conditions for survival.

In a report by Human Rights Watch based on testimonies from former prisoners, they stated that “Egyptian security forces pressure detainees to confirm their confessions without taking any measures to investigate the abuses they face. Prosecutors have also encouraged abuse by confirming falsified arrest dates provided by national security officers, who claimed they had arrested suspects a day before presenting them to the prosecution, effectively erasing the official record of enforced disappearance.”

Studying in Prison

The inhumane conditions of Egyptian prisoners call for support from the National Dialogue Committee and Egyptian parliamentarians to take action for the families’ initiative. Some of these prisoners are students in the reformatory institution, struggling to continue their secondary or university education inside the prison.

“One of the stories I always tell to set an example is an incident I experienced in 2015,” says Abdel Rahman El-Gendy. “There was a boy from Al-Sharqiya who came to Wadi al-Natrun from the reformatory institution. He had been imprisoned since he was 16, and after two years in the reformatory, he turned 18 and was transferred with a group. They hadn’t finished high school, and at that time, I had completed preparatory engineering in prison, so I volunteered to tutor them so they could take the exams in prison.”

El-Gendy adds: “I used to tutor them every day in the exercise yard: Arabic, English, math, physics, and chemistry, and I would run after them to bring them from their cells to attend the class. Most of them took the exams and graduated high school. When I returned from my exams, I learned that the boy from Al-Sharqiya had entered the languages and translation faculty. The prisons separated us, and about a week ago, I discovered by chance that the boy from Al-Sharqiya was imprisoned again. I was shocked and asked when he was re-arrested.”

El-Gendy recounts the tragedy of students inside the prisons, who have not attended their schools and universities for years. Some of them have spent over a decade in prison. **“The boy didn’t leave. From 2014 until now, every time a case ends, they send him to the police station in Al-Sharqiya to pick up a new case and go through the cycle again and again, for 11 full years.”**

El-Gendy continues: “What I discovered when I asked more is that most of the people I knew during that period from Al-Sharqiya follow the same pattern. Since 2013, there has been no such thing as release, just endless recycling of cases. The frightening thing is that those who wrote to me talk about it as a fact, as if they have accepted that life outside is no longer for them. No future, no education, no work, nothing.”

So far, El-Gendy points to the state’s complete disregard for the families’ pleas. The only statement that gave the families hope was the statement by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Political Communication Mahmoud Fawzi about the possibility of reintroducing presidential pardons. However, there have been no promises or clear responses to the families’ appeals so far.

Presidential Pardons

Political writer Yasser Al-Hawari said in statements to Daraj that the families’ plea is balanced and is like a blank check to the state, showing their willingness to accept all conditions and guarantees in exchange for the release of their loved ones from political detention. However, no clear promises have been made so far.

Responding to the possibility of an imminent presidential pardon that includes political prisoners from the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Hawari said: “It is difficult to talk about the leaders of the group because they already have channels that speak for them. Moreover, the leaders of the group reject the path of national dialogue, so it is difficult to advocate for them. However, young people might undergo intellectual reviews that qualify them for a presidential pardon.”

Abdel Rahman El-Gendy said the initiative does not differentiate between any prisoner since 2013, and that the number of Islamist prisoners is the majority in the prisons. He added: “This fact is known to everyone, as the number of civil movement prisoners is in the hundreds, while the Islamist movement has tens of thousands.”

El-Gendy emphasized: “The injustice affects everyone regardless of ideology, and the families of prisoners from all factions suffer the same torment and stand in the same queue.”

According to Human Rights Watch, international law requires detainees to be promptly brought before a judge, usually within 48 hours, to review their detention. They added: “But Egyptian law does not provide such protection. The Egyptian Code of Criminal Procedure grants the public prosecution, not judges, the power to renew pretrial detention in all serious cases involving political or national security crimes, allowing the prosecution to temporarily detain detainees for up to 18 months, after which they are recycled into new cases indefinitely.”