Amnesty International called on the Egyptian authorities to provide Khaled al-Qazzaz with urgently needed medical treatment and to release him unless he is promptly charged with a criminal offence and tried before a civilian court, the organisation said in a statement late on Thursday. Amnesty International says the detainee urgently needs surgery for spinal stenosis; a neck and back condition. The group added that al-Qazzaz was transferred to a private hospital in Cairo on 26 October but is still waiting for authorities to approve necessary medical procedures. Al-Qazzaz was a foreign relations secretary from 2012 to 2013 under the government of former president Mohamed Morsi. He has been detained since 3 July 2013, along with Morsi and the presidential team. According to Amnesty, he was held for over five months in conditions that amounted to "an enforced disappearance". In December 2013, he was transferred to al-‘Aqrab ("The Scorpion") maximum security prison. On Thursday, a court postponed the detainment renewal decision to 17 December. Last month, Tarek Al-Ghadour died in jail allegedly due to inadequate healthcare. He was suffering from liver dysfunction. Since January 2014, at least 52 people have died inside detention centres across Cairo and Giza, according to the official Forensic Medicine Authority. A further 80 people have died whilst imprisoned across Egyptian cities between July 2013 and January 2014, according to the independent observatory WikiThawra.
