RSF refers Egyptian blogger’s torture to UN special rapporteur

Held in Cairo's Badr prison, Mohamed "Oxygen" Radwan has been isolated since July 2023 in a miniscule, windowless punishment cell measuring about 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters that is artificially lit day and night and is infested by rats, cockroaches and flying insects. RSF fears for the life of the Oxygen Misr news blog's founder - who was awarded the RSF Prize for Courage in December 2023- and is asking Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, alongside other specialised UN bodies, to intervene.

"Mohamed's prison conditions - it's physical and mental torture," said Abeer al-Safty, a journalist and former colleague of the blogger. The last time his family visited Oxygen in prison, his body was covered with pustules and insect bites of all kinds, and he appeared exhausted, she told RSF.

During that visit, he told his family that he had decided to stop eating on 13 April in protest against the inhuman and degrading conditions in which he is being held. Al-Safty said she was very worried about him. "We fear another suicide attempt,"she added, referring to his attempted suicide in a prison cell in July 2021 under the impact of arbitrary detention.

RSF has learned that the prison authorities are not providing him with any medical attention because they refuse to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the conditions to which he is being subjected, just as they refuse to acknowledge that he is on hunger strike.

Solitary confinement after five years behind bars

Arrested for the first time in 2018 in connection with a report about irregularities observed during President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's reelection, Oxygen was released conditionally on 31 July 2019 subject to his presenting himself at a police station twice a week to report on his activities. He was reimprisoned two months later, on 29 September 2019, for posting videos about a series of protests, and was charged with "endangering state security" and "spreading fake news." After being held arbitrarily for nearly a year, his hopes were revived when his name appeared on a list of detainees due for release. And they were dashed when his detention was extended as a result of a last-minute decision by the prosecutor general. He was sentenced on 21 December 2021 to four years in prison, a sentence that he is serving together with Alaa Abdel Fattah, a well-known journalist who was arrested at the same time. Oxygen has been in solitary confinement since June 2023 as a punishment for trying to intercede in a dispute between a guard and fellow detainee.

The UN bodies solicited by RSF had previously called for the release of the blogger. On the international level, the European Parliament had also called for his release in November 2022.