Tora Prison ( arz, سجن طره '; ) is an Egyptian prison complex for criminal and political detainees, located in
Tora
Tora or TORA may refer to:
People
* Tora (given name), female given name
* Tora (surname)
* Tora people of Arabia and northern Africa
* Torá language, an extinct language once spoken in Brazil
Places
* Tora, Benin, in Borgou Department
* T ...
, Egypt. The complex is situated in front of the Tora El Balad metro station. The main buildings in the Tora Prison complex are Tora Agricultural Prison, Tora Liman (maximum security), Tora Istiqbal (reception), Tora El Mahkoum and Tora Supermax prison, also known as
Scorpion Prison
The Al-Aqrab Prison ( ar, سجن العقرب, lit=The Scorpion Prison; official name Tora Prison 992 Maximum-Security) is a supermax prison in Helwan, Egypt, south of Cairo. It is used for political prisoners and opponents of the Egyptian governm ...
( ar, سجن العقرب ').
History
Tora Agricultural Prison was established in 1928 by Wafdist Interior Minister
Mostafa El-Nahas
Mostafa el-Nahhas Pasha or Mostafa Nahas ( ar, مصطفى النحاس باشا; June 15, 1879 – August 23, 1965) was an Egyptian politician who served as the Prime Minister for five terms.
Early life, education and exile
He was born in ...
while he was the interior minister, in an effort to ease overcrowding at Abu Zaabal Prison.
On 1 June 1957, security guards at Tora Prison killed 21
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood ( ar, جماعة الاخوان المسلمين ''jamāʿat /al-ikhwan/el-ekhwan al-muslimīn'', ) is a Sunni Islamist religious, political, and social movement,Eric Trager,The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood", ...
prisoners.
Architecture
Tora prison consists of seven blocks each holding approximately 350 prisoners, and are divided into sections such as political prisoners and criminals according to the severity of their crimes. There is a block for police officers and judges imprisoned on bribery charges, and a disciplinary block consisting of seven solitary confinement cells, two meters squared in size and some without light or ventilation.
The prison walls are seven metres tall and are monitored by
CCTV
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly ...
. The different sections of the prison are walled off from each other. After three prisoners from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization implicated in the
assassination of Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat, the 3rd President of Egypt, was assassinated on 6 October 1981 during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Operation Badr, during which the Egyptian Army had crossed the Suez Canal and taken back a small part of t ...
escaped in 1988, 2.5 meters were added to walls.
Tora Prison has a small hospital overlooking a garden which is the block where businessmen and members of the
Mubarak regime
The history of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak spans a period of 29 years, beginning with the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat and lasting until the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising as ...
are held for corruption cases. The hospital is next to a football pitch and to a tennis court where the prisoners exercise.
The prison has held some of Egypt's most high-profile prisoners. Some cells for long-term inmates are reminiscent of typical, if cramped, apartments (i.e. including a
kitchenette
A kitchenette is a small cooking area, which usually has a refrigerator and a microwave, but may have other appliances. In some motel and hotel rooms, small apartments, college dormitories, or office buildings, a kitchenette consists of a small re ...
, etc.).
In 2014, a maximum security wing was built to hold political prisoners, whose numbers had started increasing since the July 2013 removal of
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012
Torture
Welcome parades, a technique used in Egyptian prisons in which new prisoners are physically and psychologically abused while crawling between two lines of policemen, was used in Tora Prison in September 2019 during the
2019 Egyptian protests
The 2019 Egyptian protests were mass protests in Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta and other cities on 20, 21 and 27 September 2019 in which the protestors called for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to be removed from power. Security forces responded wi ...
, when blogger Alaa Abd el-Fattah and his lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer of the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms were subjected to welcome parades following their 29 September arrests.
There have been allegations that the prison was used for other forms of torture and that there was ''
Mukhabarat
( ar, مخابرات, also transliterated '' / ''), is the Arabic term for intelligence, as used by an intelligence agency. In most of the Middle East, the term is colloquially used in reference to secret police agents who spy on civilians. Org ...
'' (Egyptian intelligence services) complicity with
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
extraordinary rendition
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpos ...
practices during the Mubarak presidency. Tora Prison may have operated in this capacity since 1995/96 (being the most accessible of the few ''liman'', i.e. maximum security prisons), making it one of the first of the
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
War on Terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...
.
In December 2020, a detailed report by the ''
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
'' highlighted the extensive changes introduced by the Egyptian authorities inside the
Scorpion Prison
The Al-Aqrab Prison ( ar, سجن العقرب, lit=The Scorpion Prison; official name Tora Prison 992 Maximum-Security) is a supermax prison in Helwan, Egypt, south of Cairo. It is used for political prisoners and opponents of the Egyptian governm ...
of the Tora Prison complex. As part of collectively punishing nearly 800 to 900 prisoners, each cell of the Scorpion Prison’s four H-shaped building were modified to block all sources of ventilation, light and electricity from the cells. The report based on a three-page letter and a 13-minute video smuggled out of the prison, and three sources, including a lawyer, explained how the restrictions were further severed to torture the political prisoners inside these cells.
Ramy Shaath, an outspoken Egyptian-Palestinian human rights defender was released from a two-and-a-half years’ long torturous detention in January 2022. Shaath became an easy target for the Egyptian authorities to arrest following his participation in the infamous 2011 pro-democracy protests in Egypt and his contribution to the foundation of the Egyptian branch of the boycott movement against
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
led by
Palestinians
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
. A vocal opponent of the Arab dictatorial system and the Israeli occupation over Palestinians, Shaath was subjected to torture, ill-treatment during his detention, detained in overcrowded prison cells, and forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship to guarantee his release from the prison, despite wrongful detention.
Notable inmates
* Maajid Nawaz, an Islamist-radical turned counter-extremist from the UK. He was visited in Tora by his lawyer, the future London Mayor,
Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Aman Khan (; born 8 October 1970) is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's sof ...
.
* †
Shukri Mustafa
Shukri Mustafa ( ar, شكري مصطفى, ; 1 June 1942 – 19 March 1978) was an Egyptian agricultural engineer who led the extremist Islamist group ''Jama'at al-Muslimin'', popularly known as Takfir wal-Hijra. He began his path toward Islamist ...
(1965−1967), executed by hanging.
*
Wolfgang Lotz
Wolfgang Lotz (6 January 1921 – 13 May 1993), who later adopted the Hebrew name Ze'ev Gur-Arie, was an Israeli spy in Egypt during the 1960s providing intelligence and conducting operations against Egyptian military scientists. He was arres ...
Mustafa Amin
Mustafa Amin ( ar, مصطفى أمين; 21 February 1914 – 13 April 1997) was an Egyptian columnist and journalist who enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the Arab world. Known for his liberal perspective, Mustafa Amin and his twin brother A ...
Azzam Azzam
Azzam Azzam ( ar, عزام عزام, Levantine Arabic: , he, עזאם עזאם; born 1962) is an Israeli Druze who was convicted in Egypt of spying for Israel, and jailed for eight years. He maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal.
Arrest ...
(1997-2004)
*
Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist terrorist group active since the 1970s. The ADL dubbed him the "propaganda chief" of the militant organisation. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordi ...
(1999/2000 previous to his execution elsewhere)
* Muhammad al-Zawahiri (1999−?2011, tortured and beaten)
*
Ashraf Shahin
Sharīf ( ar, شريف, 'noble', 'highborn'), also spelled shareef or sherif, feminine sharīfa (), plural ashrāf (), shurafāʾ (), or (in the Maghreb) shurfāʾ, is a title used to designate a person descended, or claiming to be descended, fr ...
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr ( ar, حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر ''Ḥassan Muṣṭafā Usāmah Naṣr'') (born 18 March 1963), also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped ...
(2003−?2007, reportedly tortured by electric shocks, beating and rape; see
Abu Omar case
The Abu Omar Case was the abduction and transfer to Egypt of the Imam of Milan Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition car ...
Hisham Talaat Moustafa
Hisham Talat Moustafa ( ar, هشام طلعت مصطفى) (born December 12, 1959) is an Egyptian realtor and former chairman and head of the Real Estate Branch of the Talaat Moustafa Group. He had been elected in 2004 to the Shura Council in th ...
(2008–present)
* Blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah and dozens of other civil-rights activists (2006, presumably ''Istiqbal Tura'')
** also in 2019 together with his lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer
*
Alaa Mubarak
Alaa Mohammed Hosni El Sayed Mubarak ( ar, علاء محمد حسني السيد مبارك; ) (born 26 November 1960 in Cairo) is an Egyptian businessman and the elder of two sons of Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt who serve ...
and
Gamal Mubarak
Gamal Al Din Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak ( ar, جمال الدين محمد حسنى سيد مبارك, ; born 27 December 1963) is the younger of the two sons of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and former First Lady Suzanne Mubarak ...
Safwat El-Sherif
Mohamed Safwat El Sherif ( ar, محمد صفوت الشريف; 19 December 1933 – 13 January 2021) was an Egyptian politician who served as chairman of the State Information Service, minister of information, speaker of the Egyptian Shura Coun ...
Zakaria Azmi
Zakaria Azmi ( ar, زكريا عزمي; born June 26 1938) is the former chief of presidential staff in Egypt.
Zakaria Azmi was the National Democratic Party's (NDP) deputy for el-Zeitoun district in eastern Cairo and chief of the presidential s ...
Ahmed Nazif
Ahmed Nazif ( ar, أحمد نظيف, ; born 8 July 1952) served as the Prime Minister of Egypt from 14 July 2004 to 29 January 2011, when his cabinet was dismissed by President Hosni Mubarak in light of a popular uprising that led to the Egyptian ...
Habib el-Adly
Habib Ibrahim El-Adly ( ar, حبيب إبراهيم العادلي, ; born 1 March 1938) is a former Egyptian politician. He served as interior minister of Egypt from November 1997 to January 2011. He was the longest serving interior minister und ...
* Tito Momen (sentenced for 15 years because he became a Mormon, released in 2006, went on to write a book titled "My name used to be Muhammad.")
*
Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif
Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, ( ar, سيد إمام الشريف, ''Sayyid ‘Imām ash-Sharīf''; born 8 August 1950), aka "Dr. Fadl" and Abd Al-Qader Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz, El-Zayyat, Montasser, "The Road to al-Qaeda", 2004. tr. by Ahmed Fakry has been des ...
(2004–present)
*
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in ...
(2011-2013) incarcerated in April 2011, sentenced for life imprisonment in June 2012, but released in August 2013 after a court found that there were no legal grounds for his continued detention.
* Tarek Loubani and
John Greyson
John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in ...
, two Canadian citizens arrested in the 2013 Egyptian protests and held for 50 days without charges
*
Mahmoud Abu Zeid
Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan (born c. 1987), an Egyptian photojournalist, was arrested for taking photos of the August 2013 Rabaa massacre, Rabaa massacre in Cairo, Egypt and imprisoned during the Post-coup unrest in Egypt (2013–20 ...
, an Egyptian freelance photographer arrested during the August 2013 Rabaa massacre, detained for over two years and then charged
* Mohamed Soltan, human rights activist and civilian journalist, shot during a pro-democracy protest and then arrested without a warrant in his home 10 days later in August 2013. Mohamed is still imprisoned (as of March 28, 2015) in Tora Limon maximum security prison without charge or evidence presented against him. Much of his detention has been spent in solitary confinement, likely a punishment for his international popularity and a hunger strike which he began on January 26, 2014 to protest the inhumane conditions of the prison and the torture and unjustified detention of himself and hundreds of other human rights activists and journalists
* Mustafa Ahmed Hassan Hamza (2014–present)
* †
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012Essam el-Erian
Essam al-Din Muhammad Hussein el-Erian ( ar, عصام الدين محمد حسين العريان) (28 April 1954 – 13 August 2020) was an Egyptian physician and politician. He was the vice chairman of the Freedom And Justice party. Formerly ...
Mohamed Fahmy
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy ( ar, محمد فاضل فهمي ; born April 27, 1974) is an Egyptian-born Canadian journalist, war correspondent and author. He has worked extensively in the Middle East, North Africa, for CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera Engl ...
Khaled al-Qazzaz
Khaled Al-Qazzaz (born July 3, 1979) is an educator, philanthropist, and human rights activist based in Egypt and Canada. Al-Qazzaz graduated from the University of Toronto with a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 2003.
Al-Qazzaz w ...
(2014 - 2015)
* Ezzat Ghoniem (2018-present), whose release has been requested by
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...
* †
Shady Habash
Shady Habash (21 August 1995 – 1 May 2020) was an Egyptian filmmaker.
Biography
Habash started a photography and video business in 2006. He was imprisoned without trial in March 2018 for making a music video for the exiled Egyptian rock musicia ...
(2018-2020)
*
Patrick Zaki
Patrick George Zaki is a Coptic Egyptian postgraduate student at the University of Bologna, Italy, who was detained in Egypt from 7 February 2020 until 9 December 2021. Zaki is pursuing an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women and Gender Stu ...
(2020-2021, reportedly tortured)
Unconfirmed:
* Ahmad Salama Mabruk (1999 − early 2000s?)
* Essam Marzouk (1999−?, reportedly tortured)
*
Abu Ayyub al-Masri
Abu Ayyub al-Masri ( ; , ', translation: "Father of Ayyub the Egyptian"; 1967 – 18 April 2010), also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (; ALFB transliteration: ''Ḁbnʋ ălŞɑỉƈ alLibi''; born Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al-Fakheri; 1963 – May 10, 2009) was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was i ...
(2002−?2006, reportedly tortured by confinement in a tiny space and beatings)
*Mustafa Ali Hassanien (February 2020,film-maker studying at CUNY College of Staten Island in the US)