Political Prisoner Mohamed Abdel-Ghani Faces Death as Coup Authorities Ignore Medical Needs

Political Prisoner Mohamed Abdel-Ghani Faces Death as Coup Authorities Ignore Medical Needs

 Ayman Abdel-Ghani, the Freedom and Justice Party’s Youth Secretary, said the life of his older brother, Dr Mohamed Abdel-Ghani, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in serious danger due to deliberate medical neglect.



Ayman stressed that: "The death penalty is not the only tool that the traitorous coup regime uses to punish and eliminate unarmed non-violent opponents. Systematic and deliberate slow murder is the most painful and bloody method they use.


Stripped of their humanity, junta officials just leave a sick person in custody to die slowly, having deprived him of his physician, treatment, hospital, medicine and all that could save his life".


Speaking about his brother’s suffering, Ayman added: "His family also suffers tremendously, completely unable to help him, as they live these painful and bloody chapters, the series frequently repeated, of heinous murderers deliberately preventing necessary medical care for any anti-coup detainee.


"Dr Mohamed Abdel-Ghani is an Ophthalmologist at the Zagazig University Hospital, who was arrested in August 2013 and imprisoned in Zagazig Main Prison. He has serious health issues. His heart muscle works at a dangerous 20% efficiency.


He already had a serious heart surgery. His heart only works with the help of a device installed inside his chest to regulate his heart rate (pacemaker). 


"Dr Mohamed suffered tremendously during his incarceration, due to deliberate medical negligence that ultimately led to his hemoglobin rapidly decreasing to less than 7%, and his weight to 55 kg. After his condition deteriorated and his health worsened, he was transferred – only recently – to a hospital for tests. Those pointed to a serious deterioration in his heart condition. 


"He also developed a tumor that is putting pressure on his spine. One of his vertebrae (back bones) is fractured. Dr Mohamed needs a stent to strengthen the broken vertebra, which can not be performed now due to the deterioration of his general condition.


"Dr Mohamed wears an iron cage to prevent the broken vertebrae from moving. However, prison authorities clamped his hands with heavy handcuffs and chains to iron railings in a rusty hospital bed as merciless as their hateful hearts."


Ayman pointed that the seriousness of Dr Mohamed’s condition requires immediate release on medical grounds, since his health problems cannot be treated with the very limited resources available in the prison hospital, adding that Dr Mohamed has already served more than three quarters of his sentence.


Ayman further said that Dr Mohamed has a great academic and scientific weight, but in the eyes of the junta he is only a number, just like the thousands of victims who have lost their right to life, liberty and treatment.