Wadi el-Natrun Prison ( ar, سجن وادي النطرون) is an Egyptian prison complex in the

Beheira Governorate Beheira Governorate ( ar, محافظة البحيرة ', , "the governorate of the Lake") is a coastal governorate in Egypt. Located in the northern part of the country in the Nile Delta, its capital is Damanhur. Overview Beheira Governorate ...

, north of

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

. It consists of two separate facilities 5 kilometers apart.Ali Abdel Mohsen
Local recounts prisoners' tales of forced escape from Wadi al-Natroun
3 March 2011

2011 prison break

The prison was used to incarcerate Islamists and other political prisoners under the regime of

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 t ...

and after the

Egyptian Revolution of 2011 The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January revolution ( ar, ثورة ٢٥ يناير; ), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police ho ...

, several prominent

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan ...

activists were imprisoned there. On 30 January 2011, thousands of prisoners were helped to escape from the prison. Some prisoners have suggested that those responsible for freeing them were in fact police officers acting under Interior Ministry orders, though a June 2013 court concluded that

Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...

and

Hezbollah Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...

worked with the Muslim Brotherhood to orchestrate the jailbreak.Tarek El-Tablawy & Salma El Wardany
Egyptian Court Says Foreign Groups Involved in 2011 Jailbreaks
23 June 2013. 34 Brotherhood activists, including the future president

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 Saad El-Katatni Saad El-Katatni ( ar, سعد الكتاتني, alternatively spelled ''El-Katatny'' or ''Al-Katatni''; born 4 March 1952) is an Egyptian Islamist politician who has been the chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) since October 2012. F ...

, were among those who escaped from the prison. After the coup against Morsi in July 2013, Morsi faced trial for his role in the prison break. He and 105 others were

sentenced to death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

on 16 May 2015. The

court of cassation A court of cassation is a high-instance court that exists in some judicial systems. Courts of cassation do not re-examine the facts of a case, they only interpret the relevant law. In this they are appellate courts of the highest instance. In th ...

in November 2016 overturned the death sentence on Morsi and five other Muslim Brotherhood members and then ordered a retrial for the similar charges.

References

Beheira Governorate Prisons in Egypt Prison escapes 2011 in Egypt {{prison-stub