The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights/EIPR has submitted a formal complaint to Prosecutor General Mohamed Shawky, calling for an immediate investigation into the deaths of seven detainees held at Omraneya Police Station in Giza between March 2024 and May 2025.
The complaint, filed by EIPR as the legal representative for the deceased, was registered under No. 42850 of 2025 in the public prosecutor’s registry then referred to the Omraneya Prosecution on June 14 for legal action.
EIPR demands that officers at the station be suspended pending investigation and that any responsible parties be referred to criminal trial if culpability is established.
In a statement issued Thursday, EIPR said the deceased were detained in connection with three separate criminal cases and died after varying periods of detention. It cited “alarming signs of complete absence of medical care and any form of judicial oversight over detention facilities.”
Pattern of medical neglect
The detainees, aged from their early 20s to mid-40s, included individuals with serious health conditions that required urgent and professional medical care, according to EIPR.
In some cases, the cause of death was unclear—possibly due to sudden complications or known conditions that went untreated.
Several of them remained in police custody despite having received final sentences, the rights group noted. Under Egypt’s Prisons Regulation Law (Law No. 396 of 1956), those sentenced to more than three months must be transferred to a public correctional or rehabilitation center—unless fewer than three months of the sentence remain and the individual has not yet been transferred.
“This legal requirement clearly applied to the detainees in question,” the statement said, suggesting the continued detention at the police station indicated a possible “pattern of gross negligence or systematic abuse.”
Five of the detainees had been sentenced to three years in prison in a single criminal case dating back to January 2023. EIPR did not specify the nature of charges.
One of these men reportedly died in May 2025—17 months after being detained—due to pneumonia contracted while in custody. Another died around April 2025 from internal bleeding after nearly 14 months in detention and was not transferred to a hospital in time, the group said.
Causes of death for the remaining three men sentenced in the January 2023 case were not disclosed.
Another detainee, aged 44, died in 2025 less than one month after being detained in connection with a different case. He had received a first-instance sentence of one year in prison before the case was closed following his death. Authorities have not announced an official cause of death.
In the third case, a 42-year-old man suffering from cancer and multiple sclerosis died weeks into his detention. EIPR said there was “a total lack of adequate medical care” despite the known severity of his condition.
“The repeated deaths at Omraneya Police Station over a short period and under similar conditions strongly suggest a dangerous pattern of medical neglect and lack of oversight,” the statement read. “It reflects a disregard for the lives and health of detainees, for whom the Interior Ministry has legal responsibility.”
EIPR argued that the continued police custody of individuals already sentenced, alongside the detention of chronically ill individuals without adequate care, amounted to a “flagrant violation of both Egyptian law and international treaties binding on Egypt.”
The group urged the prosecutor general to hold accountable all those responsible and to take urgent measures to protect current detainees and prevent similar deaths.
Wider concerns about detention conditions
A January 2025 report from the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms/ECRF on rising abuses in Egypt’s new prison complexes, highlighted the denial of privacy and prolonged lighting as a punitive measure. The report also recorded 50 confirmed deaths in 2024 across official and unofficial detention facilities.
Among those deaths were eight at the Badr Correctional and Rehabilitation Center, five at Wadi El-Natrun complexes, five in Minya facilities, three in the 10th of Ramadan complex, two in New Valley, and one each in Abu Zaabal and Damanhour prisons.
In November 2024, the El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence documented 251 distinct human rights violations in Egypt during October alone, in a report titled “The Archive of Oppression.”
In August 2024, several rights groups expressed concern over what they described as “the rapid deterioration of conditions inside Badr Rehabilitation and Correctional Center,” citing testimonies from detainees’ families and reports of mass hunger strikes and suicide attempts following widespread power cuts at Badr 1 prison.
These groups urged the Egyptian government to heed the demands of prisoners and calls for greater transparency in the prison system, including allowing independent human rights monitors and immediately and unconditionally releasing all those held unjustly.
