Saturday, May 17, 2008

Letter from Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin and Karim El-Beheiry to the Judges' Club

Below is my translation of a letter handed out today at a Journalists' Syndicate protest about the individuals still being detained in connection with the April 6th roundup.

The letter is to the Judges' Club which is their version of a syndicate.

The media's virtual silence about the continued detention of these men - compared with the media circus surrounding Israa Abdel Fattah's detention - is pretty marked, and pretty sad.

Letter to the Judges' Club

We, three political detainees, address the letter below to the Judges' Club and its head Zakareya Abdel Aziz from the Borg el-Arab Prison in Alexandria...

Dear Sir,

A week has passed on our hunger strike and we are extremely weak. We are appealing to you as the last and only resort for all who have suffered injustice in Egypt.

We would like in the beginning to correct certain information which has reached the press about our (the three of us) having been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of our hunger strike.

The truth is that we are still in prison after the administration refused to call an ambulance to take us to hospital, and as a result of the inability of Karim el-Beheiry and Tareq Amin to stand on their feet - as a result of their extreme weakness. Instead, a "nurse" was summoned to examine Karim, whose condition has seriously deteriorated.

We would like to know the reason why we remain in detention. We will continue the hunger strike until we either die or receive this information.

We were tortured in the state security headquarters in Mahalla on the 6th, 7th and 8th April. Officers tortured Karim using electricity while Tareq Amin and Kamal el-Fayyoumy were insulted verbally and physically assaulted. We then spent eleven days in Borg el-Arab prison in a cell with individuals with criminal convictions. When the Tanta court ordered that we be released we were held for four days in the El-Salam police station [noqtat shorta] situated between Mahalla and Tanta before we were taken to Borg el-Arab prison were we began our hunger strike.

From our detention cell, we call on you and all political currents to take action and apply pressure in order to secure the release of all those detained in connection with the events of Mahalla.
Signed
Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin, Karim El-Beheiry
Detained workers from Mahalla
Borg el-Arab Prison
Wing 22, Cell 5

2 comments:

يساري مصري said...

any way to get the Arabic version ?

Scarr said...

Hi - If Hossam doesn't have it by now then possibly from the Journos' Syndicate.

Failing that, I have a copy which I'm going to give to Moftasa to scan at some point and then will upload it.