Egyptian authorities Monday opened up Tora prison in Cairo for a media tour, following a UN report on the \u201cbrutal\u201d conditions in which jailed ex-president Mohamed Morsi was held before his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a rare tour of the sprawling jail complex, journalists were shown an exhibition of furniture made by inmates, a farm with cows and ostriches, and a brief football match between prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guided tour comes ahead of a mission to Geneva by Egyptian officials for a review on Wednesday before the United Nations Human Rights Council.The experts said the death of ousted Islamist president Morsi, who was held in Tora for five years, could amount to a \u201cstate-sanctioned arbitrary killing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His death \u201cafter enduring those conditions could amount to a state-sanctioned arbitrary killing\u201d, the experts added. They also warned that thousands are at risk of death in the same prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the media tour, abuse charges in Tora were dismissed by politicians and personalities that included for example retired ex-national football goalkeeper turned television pundit Ahmed Shobeir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis prison is more of a seaside resort now compared to what it used to be,\u201d Mostafa Bakry, a pro-Sisi parliamentarian, contended.
\nOn documented allegations of abuse, Bakry said these were foreign-originated charges designed to sow chaos, echoing the common response of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInmates are not sitting in their cells. They can play soccer or exercise and there are a lot of activities for them,\u201d said Alaa Abed, a former policeman and current head of parliament\u2019s human rights committee.Other senior officials declined to speak on the record during the tour, while AFP was prevented from talking directly with inmates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Egyptian authorities Monday opened up Tora prison in Cairo for a media tour, following a UN report on the \u201cbrutal\u201d conditions in which jailed ex-president Mohamed Morsi was held before his death. In a rare tour of the sprawling jail complex, journalists were shown an exhibition of furniture made by inmates, a farm with cows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74319,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317\/revisions\/74319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}