Tora Prison ( arz, سجن طره '; ) is an Egyptian prison complex for criminal and political detainees, located in

Tora Tora or TORA may refer to: People * Tora (given name), female given name * Tora (surname) * Tora people of Arabia and northern Africa * Torá language, an extinct language once spoken in Brazil Places * Tora, Benin, in Borgou Department * Tora, ...

, Egypt. The complex is situated in front of the Tora El Balad

metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...

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 The Al-Aqrab Prison ( ar, سجن العقرب, lit=The Scorpion Prison; official name Tora Prison 992 Maximum-Security) is a supermax prison in Helwan, Egypt, south of Cairo. It is used for political prisoners and opponents of the Egyptian gover ...

( ar, سجن العقرب ').

History

Tora Agricultural Prison was established in 1928 by

Wafdist The New Wafd Party ( ar, حزب الوفد الجديد, , New Delegation Party), officially the Egyptian Wafd Party and also known as the Al-Wafd Party, is a nationalist liberal party in Egypt. It is the extension of one of the oldest and his ...

Interior Minister

Mostafa El-Nahas Mostafa el-Nahhas Pasha or Mostafa Nahas ( ar, مصطفى النحاس باشا; June 15, 1879 – August 23, 1965) was an Egyptian politician who served as the Prime Minister for five terms. Early life, education and exile He was born in ...

while he was the interior minister, in an effort to ease overcrowding at

Abu Zaabal Abu Zaabal or Abu Za'bal (, ALA-LC: ' ) () is a huge industrial settlement in Egypt. The first Egyptian medical school was founded there, in 1827. In modern Egypt, the area is an industrial suburb of Cairo, with an extensive military–industria ...

Prison. On 1 June 1957, security guards at Tora Prison killed 21

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood ( ar, جماعة الاخوان المسلمين ''jamāʿat /al-ikhwan/el-ekhwan al-muslimīn'', ) is a Sunni Islamist religious, political, and social movement,Eric Trager,The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood", ...

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 Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...

. The different sections of the prison are walled off from each other. After three prisoners from the

Egyptian Islamic Jihad The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ, ar, الجهاد الإسلامي المصري), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad ( ar, الجهاد الإسلامي, links=no) and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and ...

organization implicated in the

assassination of Anwar Sadat Anwar Sadat, the 3rd President of Egypt, was assassinated on 6 October 1981 during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Operation Badr, during which the Egyptian Army had crossed the Suez Canal and taken back a small part of t ...

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 The history of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak spans a period of 29 years, beginning with the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat and lasting until the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising as ...

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 A kitchenette is a small cooking area, which usually has a refrigerator and a microwave, but may have other appliances. In some motel and hotel rooms, small apartments, college dormitories, or office buildings, a kitchenette consists of a small ref ...

, etc.). In 2014, a maximum security wing was built to hold

political prisoners A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...

, whose numbers had started increasing since the July 2013 removal of

Mohamed Morsi Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012

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 Alaa Ahmed Seif Abd-El Fattah ( ar, علاء أحمد سيف الإسلام عبد الفتاح, ; born 18 November 1981), known professionally as Alaa Abd El-Fattah ( ar, علاء عبد الفتاح), is an Egyptian-British blogger, software d ...

and his lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer of the

Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms (also: ''Adala and Liberties Centre'') is an Egyptian human rights organisation created in 2014 by lawyers and students, based in Cairo. Founding and leadership Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms was cre ...

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 ( ar, مخابرات, also transliterated '' / ''), is the Arabic term for intelligence, as used by an intelligence agency. In most of the Middle East, the term is colloquially used in reference to secret police agents who spy on civilians. Organi ...

'' (Egyptian intelligence services) complicity with

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

extraordinary rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored Kidnapping, forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had t ...

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 site In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a ...

s of

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...

. In December 2020, a detailed report by the ''

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

'' highlighted the extensive changes introduced by the Egyptian authorities inside the

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

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 Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

led by

Palestinians Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

. 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

Maajid Nawaz Maajid Usman Nawaz (; born 2 November 1977) is a British activist and former radio presenter. He was the founding chairman of Quilliam. Until January 2022, he was the host of an LBC radio show on Saturdays and Sundays. Born in Southend-on-Sea ...

, an Islamist-radical turned counter-extremist from the UK. He was visited in Tora by his lawyer, the future London Mayor,

Sadiq Khan Sadiq Aman Khan (; born 8 October 1970) is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's sof ...

. * †

Shukri Mustafa Shukri Mustafa ( ar, شكري مصطفى, ; 1 June 1942 – 19 March 1978) was an Egyptian agricultural engineer who led the extremist Islamist group ''Jama'at al-Muslimin'', popularly known as Takfir wal-Hijra. He began his path toward Islamist ...

(1965−1967), executed by hanging. *

Wolfgang Lotz Wolfgang Lotz (6 January 1921 – 13 May 1993), who later adopted the Hebrew name Ze'ev Gur-Arie, was an Israeli spy in Egypt during the 1960s providing intelligence and conducting operations against Egyptian military scientists. He was arrest ...

(The Champagne Spy) (1965-1968) *

Abd al-Hamid Kishk Abdal-Hamid Kishk ( ar, عبد الحميد كشك; March 10, 1933 – December 6, 1996) was an Egyptians, Egyptian preacher, scholar of Islam, activist, and author. He was a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo and was known for his humour, ...

(1981-1982) *

Mustafa Amin Mustafa Amin ( ar, مصطفى أمين; 21 February 1914 – 13 April 1997) was an Egyptian columnist and journalist who enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the Arab world. Known for his liberal perspective, Mustafa Amin and his twin brother A ...

Abbud al-Zumar Aboud El Zomor ''(also ''Abboud el-Zumar'', ''Abbud el-Zumar'', ''Aboud el-Zomoor'', ''Abboud el-Zomor'', ''Abboud el-Zomor'', ''Abod Zoummar'' '', arz, عبود الزمر, Abbud el-Zummor, , born August 1948) is an Egyptian Islamist and fundam ...

(1981-2011) *

Kamal Khalil Kamal Khalil ( ar, كمال خليل, ) is an Egyptian engineer and labour activist. He is a leading member of the Revolutionary Socialists, a representative of the Workers Democratic Party and the founder and director of the Center for Sociali ...

* Muhammad Abdelrahim al-Sharqawi (3 years in the late 1980s) *

Azzam Azzam Azzam Azzam ( ar, عزام عزام, Levantine Arabic: , he, עזאם עזאם; born 1962) is an Israeli Druze who was convicted in Egypt of spying for Israel, and jailed for eight years. He maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal. Arrest ...

(1997-2004) *

Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist terrorist group active since the 1970s. The ADL dubbed him the "propaganda chief" of the militant organisation. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordi ...

(1999/2000 previous to his execution elsewhere) * Muhammad al-Zawahiri (1999−?2011, tortured and beaten) * Ashraf Shahin (early 2000s, reportedly tortured) *

Ihab Saqr A member of the Vanguards of Conquest, Ihab Abdallah Saqr ( ar, إيهاب صقر, alternatively ''Ihab Muhammad Saqr'') was believed to have coordinated the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad and was a high-priority target for the CIA w ...

(2002−2006 ''Istiqbal Tura'', 2006−2008 ''Liman Tura'', 2008-? ''Istiqbal Tura'') *

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr ( ar, حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر ''Ḥassan Muṣṭafā Usāmah Naṣr'') (born 18 March 1963), also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped ...

(2003−?2007, reportedly tortured by electric shocks, beating and rape; see Abu Omar case) *

Ayman Nour Ayman Abd El Aziz Nour ( arz, أيمن عبد العزيز نور, ; born 5 December 1964) is an Egyptian politician, a former member of the Egyptian Parliament, founder and chairman of the El Ghad party. Nour was the first man to ever compete ...

(2005-2009) * Hisham Talaat Moustafa (2008–present) * Blogger

Alaa Abd El-Fattah Alaa Ahmed Seif Abd-El Fattah ( ar, علاء أحمد سيف الإسلام عبد الفتاح, ; born 18 November 1981), known professionally as Alaa Abd El-Fattah ( ar, علاء عبد الفتاح), is an Egyptian-British blogger, software d ...

and dozens of other civil-rights activists (2006, presumably ''Istiqbal Tura'') ** also in 2019 together with his lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer *

Alaa Mubarak Alaa Mohammed Hosni El Sayed Mubarak ( ar, علاء محمد حسني السيد مبارك; ) (born 26 November 1960 in Cairo) is an Egyptian businessman and the elder of two sons of Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt who served ...

and

Gamal Mubarak Gamal Al Din Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak ( ar, جمال الدين محمد حسنى سيد مبارك, ; born 27 December 1963) is the younger of the two sons of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and former First Lady Suzanne Mubarak. ...

(2011) * Adel al-Gazzar (2011−?) *

Safwat El-Sherif Mohamed Safwat El Sherif ( ar, محمد صفوت الشريف; 19 December 1933 – 13 January 2021) was an Egyptian politician who served as chairman of the State Information Service, minister of information, speaker of the Egyptian Shura Cou ...

* Khairat el-Shater *

Zakaria Azmi Zakaria Azmi ( ar, زكريا عزمي; born June 26 1938) is the former chief of presidential staff in Egypt. Zakaria Azmi was the National Democratic Party's (NDP) deputy for el-Zeitoun district in eastern Cairo and chief of the presidential s ...

* Ahmed Ezz *

Ahmed Nazif Ahmed Nazif ( ar, أحمد نظيف, ; born 8 July 1952) served as the Prime Minister of Egypt from 14 July 2004 to 29 January 2011, when his cabinet was dismissed by President Hosni Mubarak in light of a popular uprising that led to the Egyptia ...

Ahmed El Maghrabi Ahmed Alaeldin Amin Abdelmaksoud ElMaghraby (or Ahmed El-Maghraby, Arabic: أحمد علاء الدين أمين عبد المقصود المغربي, May 16,1945 Cairo — ), is an Egyptian- Saudi businessman and former housing minister with the ...

Anas el-Fiqqi Anas el-Fiqqi (alternate spelling: Anas El Feki, Anas El-Feki, Anas Al-Faki, Anas al-Fiqi, Anas El-Fekky or el-Fiqi) is an Egyptian politician. Anas el-Fiqq became minister of youth in Egypt before switching places with Mamdouh El-Beltagui to be ...

Habib el-Adly Habib Ibrahim El-Adly ( ar, حبيب إبراهيم العادلي, ; born 1 March 1938) is a former Egyptian politician. He served as interior minister of Egypt from November 1997 to January 2011. He was the longest serving interior minister und ...

Tito Momen Tito may refer to: People Mononyms *Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), commonly known mononymously as Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman *Roberto Arias (1918–1989), aka Tito, Panamanian international lawyer, diplomat, and journal ...

(sentenced for 15 years because he became a Mormon, released in 2006, went on to write a book titled "My name used to be Muhammad.") *

Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, ( ar, سيد إمام الشريف, ''Sayyid ‘Imām ash-Sharīf''; born 8 August 1950), aka "Dr. Fadl" and Abd Al-Qader Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz, El-Zayyat, Montasser, "The Road to al-Qaeda", 2004. tr. by Ahmed Fakry has been des ...

(2004–present) *

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in t ...

(2011-2013) incarcerated in April 2011, sentenced for life imprisonment in June 2012, but released in August 2013 after a court found that there were no legal grounds for his continued detention. *

Tarek Loubani Tarek Loubani M.D. is a Canadian doctor and humanitarian. He runs the Glia Project, which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, and developed a low-cost stethoscope in 2015. He serves as Associate Professor at the Universit ...

and

John Greyson John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in ...

, two Canadian citizens arrested in the 2013 Egyptian protests and held for 50 days without charges *

Mahmoud Abu Zeid Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan (born c. 1987), an Egyptian photojournalist, was arrested for taking photos of the Rabaa massacre in Cairo, Egypt and imprisoned during the post-coup unrest by the Egyptian government since 2013, where ...

, an Egyptian freelance photographer arrested during the

August 2013 Rabaa massacre On 14 August 2013, the Egyptian police and armed forces under the command of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi raided two camps of protesters in Cairo: one at al-Nahda Square and a larger one at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. The two sites had been occup ...

, detained for over two years and then charged * Mohamed Soltan, human rights activist and civilian journalist, shot during a pro-democracy protest and then arrested without a warrant in his home 10 days later in August 2013. Mohamed is still imprisoned (as of March 28, 2015) in Tora Limon maximum security prison without charge or evidence presented against him. Much of his detention has been spent in solitary confinement, likely a punishment for his international popularity and a hunger strike which he began on January 26, 2014 to protest the inhumane conditions of the prison and the torture and unjustified detention of himself and hundreds of other human rights activists and journalists * Mustafa Ahmed Hassan Hamza (2014–present) * †

Mohamed Morsi Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012 Essam el-Erian Essam al-Din Muhammad Hussein el-Erian ( ar, عصام الدين محمد حسين العريان) (28 April 1954 – 13 August 2020) was an Egyptian physician and politician. He was the vice chairman of the Freedom And Justice party. Formerly ...

(2013 - 2020) Died in prison of a heart attack. *

Essam El-Haddad Essam El-Haddad ( ar, عصام الحداد, Isām al-Haddād''; born 1953) is an Egyptian politician. He was a senior advisor for foreign relations for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Freedom and Justice Party. In August 2012, he wa ...

(2013–present) *

Gehad El-Haddad Gehad El-Haddad ( ar, جهاد الحداد; born c.1981) is an Egyptian political activist for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He acted as media spokesman for the Brotherhood from May 2013 until he was arrested on 17 September 2013. The son of ...

(2013–present) *

Mohamed Fahmy Mohamed Fadel Fahmy ( ar, محمد فاضل فهمي ; born April 27, 1974) is an Egyptian-born Canadian journalist, war correspondent and author. He has worked extensively in the Middle East, North Africa, for CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera Engli ...

(2013 - 2015) * Husam Abu al-Bukhari (2013–present) *

(2013–present) * Khaled al-Qazzaz (2014 - 2015) *

Ezzat Ghoniem Ezzat Ghoniem is an Egyptian lawyer and human rights activist. Director of the NGO Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, he disappeared on 1 March 2018 and was interrogated for three days before detention as part of a "human rights terro ...

(2018-present), whose release has been requested by

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

* † Shady Habash (2018-2020) * Patrick Zaki (2020-2021, reportedly tortured) Unconfirmed: *

Ahmad Salama Mabruk Ahmad Salama Mabruk ( ar, الشيخ أحمد سلامة مبروك; 1956 – 3 October 2016), known as Abu Faraj al-Masri ( ar, أبو الفرج المصري), was a senior leader in the Syrian militant group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and was previ ...

(1999 − early 2000s?) * Essam Marzouk (1999−?, reportedly tortured) *

Abu Ayyub al-Masri Abu Ayyub al-Masri ( ; , ', translation: "Father of Ayyub the Egyptian"; 1967 – 18 April 2010), also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir

(1999−?, based on claim of

Mamdouh Ismail Mamdouh Ismail ( ar, ممدوح إسماعيل) is an Egyptian defence attorney and a former member of "the Jihad group" (later called Egyptian Islamic Jihad), who since the 1980s has represented various Egyptians accused of terrorism offences i ...

and conflicts other reports) *

Mamdouh Habib Mamdouh Habib (born 3 June 1955) is an Egyptian and Australian citizen with dual nationality, best known for having been held for more than three years by the United States as an enemy combatant, by both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and ...

(2001/02, reportedly tortured by electric shocks, hanging) * Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery (2002−2004, reportedly tortured and beaten) *

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (; ALFB transliteration: ''Ḁbnʋ ălŞɑỉƈ alLibi''; born Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al-Fakheri; 1963 – May 10, 2009) was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was i ...

(2002−?2006, reportedly tortured by confinement in a tiny space and beatings) *Mustafa Ali Hassanien (February 2020,film-maker studying at CUNY College of Staten Island in the US)

References

External links

Official website for the Egyptian Interior Ministry Prison Service
{{Authority control Helwan Governorate Prisons in Egypt 1908 establishments in Egypt Buildings and structures in Cairo