Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights received with a "great attention" the results of the national human rights council delegation's visit to Abu Za'bal prison, where they met 4 prisoners during the visit, and resulted in documenting signs of assault on one of the prisoners, as well as the long preventive detention periods for some prisoners which affects their educational future, in addition to complaints of the arbitrariness in solitary confinement, and the restrictions on visits and the exercise hours decided by the law for some prisoners.
Out of its interest in reforming the penal systems, and its confirmation on the necessity of respecting human rights standards related to prisoners treatment, the foundation would like to highlight the following:
1- Allowing the National Human Rights Institutions to visit the prisons is a positive trend that must be expanded to include all the NGOs, also, the Ministry of Interior should develop its regulatory procedures to grantee providing a permanent institutional mechanism to enable the concerned civil society organizations to visit prisons without complications and without restrictions.
2- The foundation values the determination of the National Council for Human Rights to report the documented facts to the Attorney General, and calls the Attorney General for a prombt investigating in the facts and their validation, along with referring the offending to trial.
3- MAAT foundation demands the Egyptian government to commit to the recommendations from 112 to 115 of the universal periodic review mechanism, related to amending the definition of torture crime to respond to the international agreements, which are the recommendations that the Egyptian government announced its acceptance for them I n 20th March 2015, and pledged to amend the Penal Code in this direction.
4- MAAT foundation demands also Mr. President to reconsider the Reserve Confinement law, to grantee that students are not harmed from its provisions, to protect their educational future.
Although the disclosure of torture practices and investigating them assures that we are facing individual practices, unsystematic, and emphasis the importance of the political will to fight against torture, thus, the opportunity is still available to besiege these practices and punish their perpetrators, but the slowness in taking effective and dissuasive legislative steps, or adapting media speech that justifies those mistakes and individual practices will send negative massages to the Egyptian and international community, and it will contradict with the demands that were raised by the people in their first and second revolution.