CAIRO (Middle Eat Eye) – Rights groups have reported a spike in suicide attempts by detainees at Egypt’s notorious Badr 3 prison complex.
The complex is renowned for its rights violations against detainees, with prisoners subjected to solitary confinement and denied visits and medical treatment, prompting detainees to launch a hunger strike in June last year.
But in recent weeks, rights monitor Committee for Justice (CFJ) warned that the situation has “deteriorated dangerously,” with 15 prisoners attempting suicide in just two weeks.
On 4 July alone, three detainees attempted suicide, including a doctor who tried to take his life in front of surveillance cameras, but was stopped at the last minute.
The CFJ also reported that some prisoners had raised their suicide attempts in court and even attempted to kill themselves in court, and had been met with indifference by the presiding judge.
On 12 July, a detainee who was facing life imprisonment tried to kill himself inside the courtroom cage during a pleading session.
“The court did not react when it saw the detainee bleeding inside the cage,” Usame Mehmetoglu, UN and Regional Communications Officer at the Committee for Justice, told Middle East Eye.
“Those present made primitive attempts to stop the bleeding without any immediate medical intervention”.
They added that the presiding judge Hamada El-Sawy simply rescheduled the trial, issuing no order to transfer the detainee to a hospital or to investigate the incident.
“It was as if the incident were merely a passing scene in a routine hearing and not a glaring alarm signaling a grave humanitarian and legal disaster,” Mehmetoglu said.
On 5 July, several detainees attempted to inform the Criminal Court of their suicide attempts, but according to CFJ, the court “refused to listen, in a manner that flagrantly contradicts its legal and constitutional responsibilities”.
CFJ emphasized that the suicides are not isolated incidents but the result of a “systematic policy to dehumanize and psychologically and physically break detainees”.
While abuse and rights violations of detainees are rife across the Egyptian prison system, Badr prison has seen successive waves of hunger strikes by prisoners over its poor conditions and escalating abuses.
Rights groups have documented a slew of prisoner deaths and suicide attempts at the facility, detailing abuses such as visitation bans, 24-hour exposure to fluorescent lights, medical negligence and torture, including by electrocution and being chained to walls.
In May 2024, the prison suffered an eight-day-long power outage, knocking out ventilation systems amid soaring temperatures.
In April MEE reported that at least 13 detainees had died in Egyptian prisons in 2025 - most of them were held at Badr.