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Filmmaker Shady Habash was only 24 years old. In a letter from his cell, he wrote about slowly dying. Now he has not survived detention in the infamous Torah prison.
Filmmaker Shady Habash died in this Cairo prison.
No one knows exactly what young filmmaker Shady Habash died in. However, it is clear that he suffered greatly from the inhumane conditions of detention. In October he wrote a letter from his cell phone. “Prison does not kill, but loneliness,” he said. He fights against himself every day to avoid losing his own humanity and mind. And so as not to die slowly.
Habash, 24, had been in Cairo’s infamous Torah prison for two years without being convicted. The filmmaker seemed unable to cope with uncertainty about the length of his detention and the feeling that he had been forgotten. “Every 45 days I appear before a judge who gives me another 45 days without looking at myself or the files of my case.”
Family members confirmed his death on Saturday without mentioning the cause.
Habash’s only crime was working on a music video for the well-known regime critic Rami Essam. In the song “Balaha”, authoritarian President Abdelfatah al-Sisi is derided as “date”. In 2011, Essam became known as the “singer of the revolution” against long-term ruler Hosni Mubarak. After Sisi’s military coup in 2013, Essam fled to Sweden.
While the singer was in safe exile, Habash was arrested in 2018. The judiciary accused him of belonging to a terrorist group, spreading false news, and insulting the military, among other things. There was never a trial.
The filmmaker is just one of approximately 60,000 political prisoners under the Sisi government. Deaths occur regularly due to inhumane conditions of detention. President Mohammed Mursi, who was overthrown by Sisi, was also incarcerated in Torah prison. He collapsed in the courtroom almost a year ago and died in the hospital shortly thereafter.
In January, the American citizen Mustafa Kassem was also killed in the Torah prison. In 2018, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after five years in custody.
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