CAIRO (Middle East Eye) – Hisham
al-Qadi Hanafi, a former Egyptian MP with the Muslim Brotherhood, died on Thursday in Cairo’s notorious al-Aqrab prison due to medical negligence, his family said.
The 61-year-old died after he was moved to al-Aqrab prison 10 days ago. Hanafi was a prominent Egyptian judge and was elected as an MP in the 2013 election.
However, following a military coup staged by current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Hanafi was arrested in 2014 and spent four years in prison.
He was eventually released but was detained again on 8 March 2021. His elder brother, Abu Bakr al-Qadi, died in an Egyptian prison in 2014.
Rights groups have accused Egyptian authorities of maintaining a policy of medical negligence, torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners, resulting in the death of 49 people in 2021. Six died in December.
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s former president who was deposed by Sisi, suffered from poor health during his five years of detention, before collapsing in court and dying in June 2019.
The UN high commissioner for human rights accused Egyptian authorities of “arbitrarily killing” the 67-year-old Morsi, who was kept in “brutal condition” in Tora prison.
Tora and al-Aqrab are notorious prisons where cells are overcrowded and infested with insects.

Qaradawi’s Daughter Released

Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities on Friday released the daughter of exiled preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi after four and a half years of pre-trial detention, a judiciary source told AFP.
Ola al-Qaradawi, daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader, still faces charges including “joining an illegal organization” and over alleged links to its funding.
She and her husband Hossam Khalaf, who remains in detention, were arrested on June 30, 2017.
Egypt branded the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist organization” in 2013, months after Morsi, who hailed from the Brotherhood, was ousted from power.
Pre-trial detention in Egypt is legally capped at two years but the authorities often keep detainees behind bars for longer by filing new charges.
The practice has been strongly condemned by rights groups, which estimate more than 60,000 political prisoners are being held in Egypt.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who himself served several terms in Egyptian jails, lives in Qatar.