Prison Authority begins transferring women prisoners to new Wadi al-Natrun complex, lawyers say

The Prison Authority has begun to transfer as many as hundreds of women prisoners from two sites in Cairo and Alexandria to the newly established prison complex in Wadi al-Natrun, Beheira Governorate, according to two lawyers who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. 

No consideration is made for prisoners’ families during the transfers, said the lawyers, noting that the relocation often entails additional transportation costs for family members who wish to visit their imprisoned loved ones.

Prison staff at the Qanater women’s prison in Qalyubiya told the first lawyer that 500 women prisoners were transferred on Saturday and Sunday to Wadi al-Natrun.

Family members of inmates at the Qanater facility reported seeing 11 vehicles outside carrying inmates, the lawyer said. Prison administrators told the relatives that the prison had begun to transfer inmates to the new complex and would continue to do so over the coming days.

Women prisoners in Qanater requested that their families head to the Qalyubiya prison to pick up their belongings before their transfer to Wadi al-Natrun, since the inmates would not be allowed to keep anything with them during the transfer other than one blanket, lawyer Ahmed Helmy wrote on a personal social media account on Saturday. 

Helmy advised prisoners’ families to review visiting dates with the prison administration to find out if their relatives had been transferred to the new complex.

Women who were held in remand detention in Borg al-Arab prison pending trial were also transferred, along with a number of other prisoners, to Wadi al-Natrun nearly ten days ago, said the second lawyer, who acts on behalf of some of the women.

Prisoners from across the country will likely be transferred to the women's section of the new prison complex, said the second lawyer.

A trial operational phase at the Wadi al-Natrun facility was launched in October, when 12 existing prisons were identified as feeder facilities to populate the new complex, though the facilities at Borg al-Arab and Qanatar were not named among them.

So far, the Interior Ministry has not announced when the new prison complex will be officially opened, or how prisoners who will be transferred there are selected.

Prisons overlooking the Nile in the Tora complex — Tora Investigation prison, Tora Liman and the Liman prison hospital — have been emptied recently, the two lawyers told Mada Masr, and some of these sites’ former inmates were also moved to Wadi al-Natrun.

The arbitrary transfers could constitute an infraction of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, according to Marian Sidhom, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The UN guidelines, known as the “Nelson Mandela Rules,” stipulate that prisoners' families should not be punished by being obliged to travel long distances for visits. 

Sidhom added that the transfer of prisoners from Cairo and other governorates to a complex located in Beheira will increase the trouble lawyers and families face while visiting their imprisoned relatives, adding that Egypt’s prisons are not fairly distributed in terms of geography.