Alexandria woman shot dead trying to visit detained husband

A woman died of a gunshot wound inside the Borg al-Arab police station in Alexandria after a conscript allegedly accidentally shot her, the state-owned newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Thursday.

The victim was shot while waiting to visit her husband, Belal Mohamed Ahmed, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was being held in custody at the police station.

The conscript was detained and his military-issued weapon confiscated for further examination, according to the Alexandria Security Directorate. The prosecution was informed of the incident and will start investigations.

The shooting comes after several families of detained Brotherhood members complained about difficulties visiting their relatives in prison.

In August 2013 Aisha al-Shater, daughter of the high-profile Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shater, said her family was not allowed to visit her father in prison or bring him needed medications.

“Families of the detainees are not allowed to visit their imprisoned families — not deliver clothes, food or even medication to them. A lot of them are of old age, and we have no idea how they function without their medication,” Aisha said in an interview with the online Al-Fajr newspaper.

Relatives of the 20 Al Jazeera journalists currently detained in high security prison facilities on terrorism-related charges have reported similar complaints.

On Tuesday, the family of Mohamed Fahmy — the Al Jazeera English Cairo bureau chief —released a statement decrying his poor health and denial of medical treatment while being held in brutal conditions in solitary confinement.

Fahmy has reportedly been suffering from a shoulder injury since his arrest on December 29.

His family said he had been “stripped of the one blanket he had, and forced to sleep on the bare floor.”