Tora Prison
Tora Prison ( '; ) is an Egyptian prison complex for criminal and political detainees, located in Tora, Egypt. The complex is situated in front of the Tora El Balad metro station. The main buildings in the Tora Prison complex are Tora Agricultural Prison, Tora Liman (maximum security), Tora Istiqbal (reception), Tora El Mahkoum and Tora Supermax prison, also known as Scorpion Prison ( '). History. Tora Agricultural Prison was established in 1928 by Wafdist Interior Minister Mostafa El-Nahas while he was the interior minister, in an effort to ease overcrowding at Abu Zaabal Prison. On 1 June 1957, security guards at  Tora Prison killed 21 Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prisoners. Architecture. Tora prison consists of seven blocks each holding approximately 350 prisoners, and are divided into sections such as political prisoners and criminals according to the severity of their crimes. There is a block for police officers and judges imprisoned on bribery charges, and a disciplinary block consisting of seven solitary confinement cells, two meters squared in size and some without light or ventilation. The prison walls are seven metres tall and are monitored by CCTV. The different sections of the prison are walled off from each other. After three prisoners  from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization implicated in the assassination of Anwar Sadat escaped in 1988, 2.5 meters were added to walls. Tora Prison has a small hospital overlooking a garden which is the block where businessmen and members of the Mubarak regime are held for corruption cases. The hospital is next to a football pitch and to a tennis court where the prisoners exercise. The prison has held some of Egypt's most high-profile prisoners. Some cells for long-term inmates are reminiscent of typical, if cramped, apartments (i.e. including a kitchenette, etc.). In 2014, a maximum security  wing was built to hold political prisoners, whose numbers had started increasing since the July 2013 removal of Mohamed Morsi from office. Torture. Welcome parades, a technique used in Egyptian prisons in which new prisoners are physically and psychologically abused while crawling between two lines of policemen, was used in Tora Prison in September 2019 during the 2019 Egyptian protests, when blogger Alaa Abd el-Fattah and his lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer of the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms were subjected to welcome parades following their 29 September arrests. There have been allegations that the prison was used for  other forms of torture and that there was "Mukhabarat" (Egyptian intelligence services) complicity with CIA extraordinary rendition practices during the Mubarak presidency. Tora Prison may have operated in this capacity since 1995/96 (being the most accessible of the few "liman", i.e. maximum security prisons), making it one of the first of the black sites of George W. Bush's War on Terror. In December 2020, a detailed report by the "Human Rights Watch" highlighted the extensive changes introduced by the Egyptian authorities inside the Scorpion Prison of the Tora Prison complex. As part of collectively punishing nearly 800 to 900  prisoners, each cell of the Scorpion Prison’s four H-shaped building were modified to block all sources of ventilation, light and electricity from the cells. The report based on a three-page letter and a 13-minute video smuggled out of the prison, and three sources, including a lawyer, explained how the restrictions were further severed to torture the political prisoners inside these cells. Ramy Shaath, an outspoken Egyptian-Palestinian human rights defender was released from a two-and-a-half years’ long torturous detention in January 2022. Shaath became an easy target for the Egyptian authorities to arrest  following his participation in the infamous 2011 pro-democracy protests in Egypt and his contribution to the foundation of the Egyptian branch of the boycott movement against Israel led by Palestinians. A vocal opponent of the Arab dictatorial system and the Israeli occupation over Palestinians, Shaath was subjected to torture, ill-treatment during his detention, detained in overcrowded prison cells, and forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship to guarantee his release from the prison, despite wrongful detention. Notable inmates. Unconfirmed: