Sisi’s New Prisons « LRB blog
Omar Robert Hamilton 14 July 2016
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/07/14/omar-hamilton/sisis-new-prisons
I hadn’t seen Alaa for two years. Two years since we stood at his father’s funeral on the marble stairs of Omar Makram mosque. Two years since he was muscled by plainclothes police into an unmarked car back to prison. My cousin has been in prison for almost as long as Sisi has ruled Egypt. He was sentenced to five years for organising a protest. This month I was allowed to visit him.
Torah prison complex is built like a medieval fortress city. An outer wall rings a vast area that includes several prisons of varying horror, administrative buildings, farmland, a police academy and, now, a courthouse. We carried bags heavy with food and clean clothes up to the prison walls. We waited with the other visitors in the dusty runnels beside the cement blast walls for the man in black uniform to to drop his leg and let us pass. We sat on the metal seats of a brightly painted road train dragged by a tractor into the penal complex. ‘This is new,’ my aunt Laila said, gesturing at a grey concrete wall. ‘I think it’s maximum security.’ The train lurched forward.