CAIRO - Almost nine months after the January 25 revolution started, the conditions in Egyptian prisons were back to normal, according to First Assistant Minister of the Interior Mohamed Naguib. Mansour el-Essawi, Minister of the Interior, ordered to draw up a reconstruction plan to repair what got damaged by militants during and after the revolution. Precautions were to be implemented to make such attacks impossible in the future. He added that the Ministry spent millions of Egyptian pounds on renovating prison buildings and replacing demolished furniture and burned cars. Naguib promised that all crimes against prisoners would be punished and their health and social care taken into consideration. He denied that there were different rules for different prisoners; important members of the previous regime, now in Tora Prison, would not get any preferential treatment. “Nobody is above the law, including Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, the sons of the toppled president,” Naguib said. He added that all officials, accused of corruption and other crimes, were in Tora (as opposed to being distributed across several prisons) because Tora was closer to the courts. According to Naguib, 33,000 prisoners had escaped from different jails during the revolution. A large number got captured and only 6,000 were still at large. Efforts of catching the remaining escapees were co-ordinated with the armed forces. Naguib stressed that all prisoners were dealt with according to human rights, noting that the National Council of Human Rights was visiting prisons on a regular basis and praised the way prisoners were treated. Naguib also addressed rumours that there were prisoners with AIDS and other contagious diseases, stating that there was no survey giving detailed information. Hospital wards in prisons would take care of these cases in co-ordiation with the Health Ministry, he told Al-Wafd opposition newspaper. He asserted that all prisoners were provided with comprehensive medical care and prisoner release was being fast-tracked. He also noted that there was no difference in dealing with prisoners sentenced in military trials; the same prison rules applied to all. As for the parents and families of prisoners, who complained that the prisons were too far away, he stated the law stipulated that prisoners should be jailed near the location of their relatives. However, long-term prisoners were jailed in specific prisons, therefore these rules did not apply.
