More than 600 children are being held in a squalid, freezing underground prison attached to a police camp near Cairo, it has emerged, in revelations that will further damage the reputation of Egypt’s security forces.
The boys, aged between 14 and 17, are being detained in Banha, 25 miles north of the capital, on a base run by the central security forces, a paramilitary branch of the police responsible for riot control.
The teenagers, who are being investigated for allegedly joining terrorist groups, blocking roads and assaulting police officers, have been kept in freezing jail cells without access to sunlight or the outdoors. They have not been allowed visits from their lawyers or relatives. “It’s not legal to keep them there. According to Egyptian law,