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Egyptian prisons are notorious for their bad conditions of detention, the widespread practice of torture and the arbitrary nature of the detention of many of their inmates. In addition to this, Alkarama has been informing the United Nations human rights mechanisms of a further worrying problem in many Egyptian prisons, whereby detainees suffering from medical conditions at the time of their arrest, are given no medical attention, often putting them at serious risk of death.

Dr Islam Sobhy Al-Mazeny, an Egyptian doctor and poet, was arrested on 7 April 2007 by the Egyptian State Security Intelligence (SSI) as he was organizing his departure to work in a Saudi Arabian clinic. In a poor state of health, he was detained without any legal basis for 8 months, until his release on 19 December 2007.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has officially notified Alkarama of opinion N. 8/2009 which declares Mr Hassan al Diqqi's deprivation of liberty arbitrary and in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dr Saud Mukhtar Al-Hashimi and the eight other people arrested with him on 2 February 2007 by the intelligence services (Mabahit) in Jeddah were transfered yesterday to Riyad Prison. Their families received calls informing them of this transfer without any further details.

On 13 December 2009, the Egyptian State Security Intelligence (SSI) raided the houses and arrested Mohamed Omar Mohamed Omar,  Ahmed Fathi Ahmed Amer,  Mohamed Mustafa Mohamed Mustafa, Ahmed Sobhi Abulkasem Kotb and Mahmoud Adel Mohamed Mohamed Marzouk in Bani Suef.

They detained them at SSI headquarters in Bani Suef from 13 to 19 December 2009 where they were subject to all kinds of torture and mistreatment under the command of SSI officer Amro Al Mufti, known for his sadistic treatment of prisoners.

Alkarama today submitted to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention the case of Abdurrahman Koki, a 40 year old Syrian religious figure arrested on 22 October 2009 by the Political Security branch of the Syrian intelligence services for having expressed his religious and political views on a widely watched program on the satellite television channel Aljazeera.

Lakhdar Bouzenia, aged 38 at the time, was a professor of Arabic literature at the Lycée Sidi Abdelaziz in the governorate of Jijel.

Today, the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) was once agai