Coronavirus: Pompeo urges Egypt to keep American prisoners safe amid pandemic
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressed to his Egyptian counterpart on Thursday that Americans detained in Egypt should be kept safe during the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department has said.
The State Department did not give any details about the prisoners, but three Americans held in Egypt were mentioned in a letter written by a bipartisan group of US senators and sent to Pompeo this month, asking him to call for the release of Americans detained in several countries, citing the risk from the virus.
Pompeo, in his call with Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, "emphasised that detained US citizens be kept safe and provided with consular access during the Covid-19 pandemic," the State Department said in a statement.
Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, has killed more than 175,000 globally, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In Egypt, the disease has killed 276 people and infected more than 3,600, the WHO said.
Egyptian-American medical student Mohamed Amashah, one of the prisoners mentioned in the US lawmakers' letter, has been awaiting trial for more than a year on charges of misusing social media and helping a terrorist group.
Last month Amashah, who suffers from an autoimmune disease and asthma, started a hunger strike to draw attention to his plight, his parents said.
Conditions ripe for disease
There are 114,000 prisoners in Egypt, according to a recent UN estimate.
Rights groups, lawyers and current and former prisoners, say inmates are often kept in cramped, dirty cells and lack running water, adequate ventilation and healthcare: conditions ripe for the rapid transmission of disease.
Last week, Egypt said it was testing inmates at all its prisons for the coronavirus, releasing rare footage of prominent political prisoners in the process.
It was unclear why all prisoners were being tested when the Egyptian government usually reserved tests for those displaying symptoms.
Preventive medicine teams affiliated with the interior ministry have been disinfecting all police and detention facilities nationwide as part of the government’s efforts to contain the virus, according to a statement.
“To guarantee the safety and health of workers and visitors of police facilities, as well as prison inmates, the Ministry of Interior continues to activate preventive medicine measures in those places, through conducting sanitisation and disinfection operations in accordance with a timetable,” the ministry announced in a promotional video posted on Facebook.
In January, the US confirmed the death of Egyptian-American Mustafa Kassem in a prison in Egypt, where he had been in custody since 2013, and said it would continue raising concerns over Cairo's poor human rights record, Reuters reported.
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