21 May 2022; MEMO: Egyptian human rights organizations have announced the deterioration of Aisha Al-Shater's health, the daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat Al-Shater, during her detention at Al-Qanater Women's Prison.
Aisha is suffering severe health complications, such as bone marrow failure, which led to a shortage of blood cells, including platelets and red blood cells.
In a report, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) revealed the suffering of Aisha and demanded her release. Although she has exceeded the two-year pre-trial detention period stipulated by Egyptian law, she was not released and requests for her release due to health were rejected.
In the last court session, the Emergency State Security Court decided to allow Aisha to be treated by haematologists and oncologists.
Aisha has suffered many serious violations since her arrest on 1 November, 2018, inside the National Security headquarters in Abbasiya and at Qanater women's prison, including physical torture by beating, electric shock, psychological abuse and ill-treatment. She was almost permanently blindfolded and was forcibly disappeared for three weeks. Her family has not been allowed to visit, call or communicate with her in any way since her transfer to Al-Qanater Women's Prison.
Other violations against Aisha were also recorded, such as placing her in solitary confinement for more than a year, forcing her to wear light clothes during winter in a cell with no heating, unjustified searches of her cell, stripping her of her simple personal belongings, depriving her of appropriate medical care and handcuffing her throughout her medical stay at Al-Qasr Al-Aini Hospital.
The Public Prosecution accuses Aisha of assuming leadership duties in an unnamed terrorist group between 2014 and 2021: "For the purpose of working to disrupt the provisions of the Constitution and laws and to prevent state institutions and public authorities from exercising its actions and to harm national unity and social peace."
The Public Prosecution charged Aisha, her husband and others with charges of possessing publications and recordings that promoted the unnamed terrorist group, as well as providing them with financial aid.
All the defendants imprisoned in the case deny the accusations.
Human rights organisations estimate the number of political detainees in Egypt at about 60,000, since President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took office in 2014, after his coup against the first democratically-elected civilian president, the late Mohamed Morsi.
Following the coup, the authorities launched a massive crackdown on Islamists, liberals, academics, journalists, lawyers and activists, as well as former or potential presidential candidates, most of whom are still in prison.
