Former Muslim Brotherhood MP dies in Egyptian prison amid accusations of medical neglect

Cairo - Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and former MP Hamdy Hassan died on Thursday in his cell in the notorious maximum-security Al-Aqrab prison, his family said Friday on social media.

The cause of Hamdy’s death remains unclear. However, according to a post by the El-Shehab human rights organisation released on its official Facebook page, he was allegedly subjected to “deliberate medical negligence.”

The group described Hassan as “a victim of systematic killings.”

Hassan’s son, who goes by the name Baraa Hamdy, wrote on Twitter that his father's family was allowed access to Muslim funeral rites by the authorities with only six people present amidst extreme security measures.

“We hope that…my precious father can be considered by God as a martyr…God let him go after spending eight years at the prisons of the oppressors,” Baraa tweeted. 

Another elected parliamentarian Hamdy Hassan dies in Egypt prison due to medical negligence.

Reports that this is the 5th death by negligence just in November!

Critical to note: this MP was formerly exonerated- but then recycled into another case. #NotANumber #حمدى_حسن

— Abrara (@Abrara_Rageh) November 26, 2021

A former physician and MP, based in Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Hassan was detained in 2013, as part of a wave of arrests that targeted Muslim Brotherhood members."For five years, my father was denied the right to receive family visits at prison, while being held in solitary confinement," he added.

Hasan received several sentences after being found guilty of "terrorism"-related charges. The last sentence was in 2019, when he was given 15 years in prison in 2019.

Since the military overthrow in July 2013 of Egypt's first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, the regime of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has engaged in the systematic repression of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Morsi was a member.

Within months of the coup against the now-deceased Morsi, the Egyptian authorities took several measures to undermine the Brotherhood - arresting thousands of members, banning it in September 2013, and declaring it a terrorist organisation in December that same year. 

The Islamist group has recurrently rejected such allegations, maintaining that it is committed to peaceful activism.