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Detainee’s death raises concerns on conditions of prisoners in Egypt

Egyptian artist Shady Habash died under strange circumstances in a prison cell where he had been in pretrial detention since 2018, raising criticism from local and international rights organizations.
A picture taken during a guided tour organised by Egypt's State Information Service on February 11, 2020, shows an Egyptian policeman near watch towers at Tora prison in the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

CAIRO — "Prison doesn’t kill but loneliness does. I need your support in order not to die. I tried to resist on my own … so that I get out the person you’ve known; but I can’t take it anymore." An Egyptian artist wrote these words a few months before he died in the early hours of May 2 in a Cairo prison.

Independent filmmaker and photographer Shady Habash's gloomy words have seen light through his friends and are providing people of a reminder of his ordeal.

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