‘High security prison 992‘: welcome to the hell of the rectangle of death. The shaped blocks H of the prison of Tora, on the southern outskirts of the Cairo, refer to the infamous prison of Maze, more commonly referred to as Long Kesh, in the Northern Irish town of Lisburn, where dozens of inmates died between 1971 and 2000, including Bobby Sands, leader of the IRA struck down after 64 days of hunger and thirst strike. The levels of cruelty they are not dissimilar between general conditions worst, violence and torture, with one difference: the structure at the gates of Belfast it was closed after Peace Agreements of 1998 (Good Friday Agreement) and a series of spectacular escapes, while the hell of Tora he is active and does not seem destined to abdicate at all. Just last September, the attempted escape by a group of inmates in the ‘common crimes’ arm was bloodily repressed by the security apparatus: 8 dead, including 4 policemen. Over the years, with a growing exponentially, international human rights organizations, starting with Amnesty International, denounced the terrible conditions in which the inmates of Tora. The rest of the accounts of eyewitnesses, themselves victims of abuse and practices of torture, once out of that nightmare.
From the origins to changes for the Muslim Brotherhood – Initially built in 1908 as an ‘agricultural prison’, Tora has undergone a series of make-up interventions. The first in 1928 when the then Minister of the Interior, Mustafa al-Nahhas, urged its upgrading to alleviate the overcrowding of the then main prison of Abu Zaabal. Jumping forward a few decades, in 1993 the direction of the penitentiary he decided to raise the surrounding walls by almost three meters, effectively changing the face of the entire complex. In fact each of the president O dictators, depending on how you have to consider them, in his own way he got his hands on the state prison capable of solving all the problems of the prison network male (a Tora there is no female branch, the penitentiary in. has been in operation for years al-Qanater, on the opposite side of the capital) ofEgypt. Ad Anwar Sadat happened to have to record after i Bread Riots, the 1977 Bread Protest, making one of the H blocks.
At the maximum of its official capacity, the ‘992’ should accommodate 1500 prisoners, in reality, depending on the period, the population exceeds 2 thousand units. To increase the range of the structure, once the external expansion area is exhausted, Tora began to develop upward. There consequence it was a worsening of the prison life lived by most of the inmates in truly inhuman conditions and the chronicles of the stories arriving from the inside confirm the repressive interface of a ruthless regime against its opponents.
In 1991 it was the turn of Hosni Mubarak (himself a guest, in addition to his two children Gamal e Alaa, of the prison of Tora from 2012 to 2013 and then released by al-Sisi despite the sentence of life imprisonment hanging on him) give the green light to works, which ended two years later, to stem the risks of ‘excellent’ escapes. Three years earlier, something striking had happened: the two members of the Islamic jihad responsible for the spectacular assassination of the former president Sadat October 6, 1981 (very important symbolic date in Egypt marking the start of the war of Kippur, October 6, 1973).
The last retouch to the image of the prison in chronological order it was completed in 2014 on the orders of the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi: the realization of a section special of maximum security for political prisoners, that is, for the exponents of the Muslim Brothers. In that section, among others, spent a period of detention the head of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, and the number two, Essam el-Erian, who died in unclear circumstances in 2019 and 2020.
The inmates: from Zaki to the leaders of the Tahrir Square Revolution – Until the other night inside the section Liman Tora the heads of the EIPR were imprisoned, Gasser Abdel Razek, Karim Ennarah e Mohamed Bashir, released on bail and returned home to their families after a few weeks of detention. In the next section Scorpio II, Unlike, Patrick Zaki | he has just entered his tenth month of imprisonment. With him dozens and dozens of activists, including Alaa Abdel Fattah, one of the leaders of the Revolution of Tahrir square of January 2011. Due to the emergency Coronavirus, Egyptian authorities have blocked family visits since March. In his case, they went further. On June 21, the mother and two sisters of Alaa Abdel Fattah, after waiting for days in front of the gate of Tora at least to deliver basic necessities to their loved one, they have been attacked outside the prison. It happened at dawn, when a group of women brutally assaulted them in the total inertia of the prison staff. Two days later, the three women attempted to report the assault to general power of attorney, with the result that the younger sister, You, it ended ad al-Qanater where she is still a recluse.
To reach the prison of Tora simply board the metro line 1 from ‘Sadat’ station in the square Tahrir and after ten stops get off at Tora el-Balad. Through an underpass and a lively local market, in a few minutes on foot you arrive in front of the main entrance gate of the penitentiary. Outside some bars they sit at exclusively agents penitentiaries, of the territorial police and plainclothes agents of the State Security. Staying in that area for too long can be dangerous. The perimeter wall, raised to almost 10 meters, is propped up by roof terraces through which the guards keep the inside and especially the outside of the prison under close surveillance. From the outside it is impossible to imagine the size of a building that has risen over the decades. Each H-shaped block houses one of the sections of the prison: the maximum security section, Tora Liman (where they were detained Abdel Razek, Ennarah e Bashir), Tora Istiqbal, Tora el-Makhoum and the section of Tora Supermax, better known as Scorpio II (Aqrab). Within this section, all the so-called prisoners of conscience, activists for the human rights, journalists, lawyers, celebrities.
The cells and the regulated light in a control room – Overall, the largest and most feared penitentiary in Egypt is made up of 320 cells, equally divided by the four H-blocks. Most of them measure 2.5 meters by 3 meters and are 3.5 meters high to rise, but there they are also bigger ones capable of hosting more 10 people at a time. Each ordinary cell has a window 90 by 80 centimeters and faces or onto other prison buildings or on main walls. In addition to fires, often without mattress, and in the toilet the cell has one light bulb whose ignition is regulated by a control room. The larger ones were originally designed to house two inmates, but the increase in the prison population forced the management to include more bunk beds.
Each section has its own refectory and of the external space and i inmates of one area never mix with those of another. In the huge city penitentiary there are also a football field and a smaller multipurpose one originally born as a tennis court. On the rear part of the area of Tora the appendix for the that of isolation. The so-called ‘disciplinary block’ includes some set, all without windows, therefore without natural light e ventilation. Certainly not one is missing section medica, a kind of point of first rescue, unable to solve diagnosis elementary. Prisoners are transferred to one of the city’s hospitals only when it is not possible to do otherwise. Often requests for help go unheeded. It happened last May to the young director Shady Habash, died after ingesting detergent, not treated properly and left in agony in his cell.
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