The death of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has cast the spotlight on the dire conditions faced by political prisoners in Egypt under the government of army chief-turned-president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was declared dead on Monday after collapsing inside a soundproof cage while on trial in a Cairo courtroom. The 67-year-old, who had a long history of health issues, including diabetes and liver and kidney disease, had been behind bars for nearly six years following his toppling in a July 2013 military coup led by el-Sisi. 

Since then, Morsi was denied medical care; his family was allowed to visit him in prison only three times; and he was held in solitary confinement for as much as 23 hours a day, which under United Nations guidelines classifies as torture.

“Former President Morsi’s death followed years of government mistreatment, prolonged solitary confinement, inadequate medical care, and deprivation of family visits and access to lawyers,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al Jazeera.

But the former president was just one of tens of thousands of prisoners suffering under similar conditions. 

Campaign of arrests

Under el-Sisi’s rule, Egyptian security forces have engaged in a campaign of intimidation and arrests of political opponents and civil society activists, with at least 60,000 people – including leaders of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood such as Morsi – believed to have been imprisoned on political grounds

In 2017, HRW released a report which documented the widespread use of torture in detention centres in Egypt. It came on the back of long-standing allegations that prison conditions in Egypt do not meet basic international standards and demands by rights groups for action on the systematic ill-treatment and torture of inmates.

But some prisoners are subjected to more brutal conditions than others.

“Members of the Muslim Brotherhood were among the political prisoners targeted for solitary confinement,” Hussein Baoumi, an Egypt researcher with Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera.

In 2016, HRW documented the grim conditions in Cairo’s high-security Scorpion prison, where those considered enemies of the state, including many Muslim Brotherhood leaders, are being held.

The report, titled “We are Tombs“: Abuses in Egypt’s Scorpion Prison, shed a light to the poor sanitary facilities and degrading conditions endured by prisoners, including lack of access to beds, mattresses or basic hygiene items.

Lawyers and former prisoners also told HRW that inmates were beaten, humiliated and confined for weeks in cramped “discipline” cells. The rights group argued that authorities also “interfered with their [prisoners’] medical care in ways that may have contributed to some of their deaths”. 

‘Tyranny of human rights’

But deaths due to medical neglect are nothing new. According to Human Rights Monitor, more than 300 detainees have died in prison in Egypt since the coup in 2013, with the cause of death principally due to “medical neglect and torture”.

“Egypt is a tyranny of human rights,” Wafik Moustafa, a medical doctor and head of the London-based British Arab Network, told Al Jazeera, adding that Egyptian authorities routinely ignore court orders.

“The judiciary is not independent or even semi-independent. There is no oversight and accountability of the courts.”

Moustafa said the fact that detainees are not only deprived of access to a lawyer, but also, more generally, of the right to a fair trial, can in itself be considered as a form of ill-treatment.

He described the glass-enclosed cage behind which Morsi had to sit in court as “extremely inhumane” since it limited his ability to communicate. According to Moustafa, the “unhealthy conditions” Morsi experienced behind the soundbox could have contributed to his death. “There was no way of controlling the temperature in the soundproof box,” Moustafa said.

For Leah Whitson, the lack of access to lawyers and solitary confinement endured by prisoners such as Morsi means that what happens to certain individual detainees in Egypt is shrouded in secrecy.

Egyptian denials

The Egyptian government has repeatedly denied that torture is taking place in the country’s prisons.

After the release of HRW’s 2017 report, the Egyptian government blocked the rights group’s website and held a press conference to dismiss its findings.

In January 2019, el-Sisi denied the existence of political prisoners in Egypt in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes show

Taher Abdelmuchsen, a senior legal consultant based in Doha and former deputy of the Egyptian Shura Council, said the Egyptian authorities were in denial of the systematic nature of the ill-treatment of prisoners.

He argued that Egyptian authorities were unlikely to take action despite the condemnation by rights groups since Egypt’s powerful allies would not demand accountability.

“El-Sisi doesn’t care about the human rights reports because he already secured his relations with his allies. But, of course, these reports stigmatise him in the international community, and therein lies their strength. These reports are the available method now to press on him to improve the prisoners’ situation.” 

In Abdelmuchsen view, the international spotlight could, in time, lead to incremental improvements in prison conditions.

But for those in a position similar to Morsi, such improvements might come too late. 

Hope Hicks broke with President Donald Trump during her interview with the House Judiciary Committee this week, telling lawmakers that offers of foreign assistance in U.S. elections should be “rejected and reported to the FBI,” Chairman Jerry Nadler said on Thursday.

Hicks, the longtime former Trump confidante, sat for nearly eight hours with the committee on Wednesday and fielded questions on several subjects related to her tenure as a senior aide on the Trump campaign, the presidential transition period, and in the White House as communications director.

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Nadler indicated during a Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday that Hicks was also asked about Trump’s recent comments to ABC News in which he suggested that he would accept a foreign adversary’s offer of damaging information about a political opponent.

According to Nadler, Hicks “knew that the president’s statement was troubling” and “understood the president to be serious.”

“She also made clear that even she knew that such foreign assistance should be rejected and reported to the FBI,” added Nadler.

Nadler did not quote Hicks directly, but the transcript of her testimony is set to be released later this week.

A White House lawyer was present for Hicks’ interview in order to assert the White House’s position that Hicks was “absolutely immune” from answering questions about her tenure in the Trump administration. Democrats expressed frustration with the interview, and some suggested that the committee could soon take Hicks to court to enforce its subpoena.

More than 110 children in India, most from poor rural families, have died this month from encephalitis, a type of brain disease that has afflicted the eastern state of Bihar for more than two decades.

Health experts have long been dumbfounded by the root of the encephalitis outbreak, commonly known as brain fever, in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district.

Recent studies have suggested that natural toxins in lychees could harm undernourished children by blocking their ability to produce enough blood sugar, which can lead to death.

The link to the fruit, however, is inconclusive, said Alok Ghosh, the Muzaffarpur district magistrate, who said that in about half of the more than 400 known cases of encephalitis, the children had not consumed lychees.

Three medical sources at the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital, where some 95 patients have died, said they thought serious dehydration was likely to blame.

What is encephalitis?

Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, caused by any one of a number of viruses.

Early symptoms can be similar to those of flu, with patients suffering from high temperatures or headaches. But symptoms can worsen within hours, and can include serious complications like seizures, paralysis and coma.

In Bihar, children were typically taken to hospital with fevers.

How could lychees cause sickness?

Researchers who conduced a study of 390 children who fell sick in 2014 in Muzaffarpur said that lychees contained hypoglycin A, an amino acid that can disrupt metabolism, lowering blood sugar levels. That can trigger hypoglycaemia, and in extreme cases, death.

The study by India’s National Centre for Disease Control and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, added that when the brain lacks glucose, it turns to other sources of energy, which are rapidly depleted, eventually pushing people into coma.

“The synergistic combination of (lychee) consumption, a missed evening meal, and other potential factors such as poor nutritional status, eating a greater number of litchis, and as yet unidentified genetic differences might be needed to produce this illness,” the researchers said in their study, which was published in the Lancet in 2017.

Retired virologist T. Jacob John also raised the possibility that encephalitis cases in Muzaffarpur could be associated with lychees in a 2014 study published by Indian science journal Current Science. Muzaffarpur is a major hub for growing lychees, which ripen at this time of year.

Any other hypothesis?

Doctors and officials are testing children for a variety of conditions and many are divided on the cause of the disease.

But dehydration as a heat wave sweeps India could be to blame, according to medical staff in Muzaffarpur.

“In my observation it is nothing but an epidemic of heat stroke,” Gopal Shankar Sahni, the head of the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital’s paediatric department, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Still, another doctor visiting Muzaffarpur from India’s financial capital of Mumbai said eating lychees could exacerbate dehydration symptoms.

“The child is hypoglycaemic and if they eat them it gets worse,” said Ravikant Singh.

How are authorities reacting?

Officials are scrambling to contain the outbreak, but victims’ relatives say poor hospital facilities have allowed the death toll to balloon.

Two lawyers have filed a petition to the Supreme Court criticising government “inaction”, citing an inadequate number of doctors and hospital beds, according to a report by Reuters partner ANI.

District magistrate Ghosh told Reuters officials were running door-to-door awareness campaigns in villages by asking people to stay clean and hydrated. Other officials are ensuring children get sweets at breakfast to maintain glucose levels.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has sent special teams of paediatricians and paramedics to Bihar, and also made 10 ambulances available.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has apologized to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for his comments about the lack of diversity among their top staff.

Hoyer said he received a call from Clyburn apologizing for remarks he made to The Wall Street Journal, in which Clyburn pointedly asked, “How many black folks are on Hoyer’s staff?”

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“I’m disappointed,” Hoyer told POLITICO on Thursday morning. “I think he’s wrong.”

Hoyer said a majority of his congressional aides — 70 percent — do represent diverse populations: women, people of color, or LGBT individuals.

Pelosi said on Thursday that she and Clyburn also discussed his comments.

“We had a conversation. He apologized,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill, said the speaker has also been committed to diversity with her own office. “Speaker Pelosi’s office is, without rival, the most diverse office on Capitol Hill. Speaker Pelosi has always believed in the importance of leading by example,” Hammill said.

In Pelosi’s combined personal and leadership offices, 84 percent of staff are women, people of color or LGBT individuals. Forty-eight percent of her staff are people of color.

Clyburn had accused Hoyer and Pelosi of not prioritizing diversity hiring within their congressional offices — charging that “tokenism is all right with” his Democratic leadership colleagues. He later walked back his remarks.

In a statement to POLITICO, Clyburn said he did not intend to offend his colleagues and acknowledged that Democrats in Congress “are making strides to address these issues,” specifically crediting Hoyer and Pelosi for the House Democratic Diversity Initiative.

But he also said more could be done.

“My expressions on the lack of diversity and, in some instances, tokenism that exist in many Congressional offices were in no way intended to slight any individual Member or Members,” Clyburn said.

“Many young people of color, however, still feel that our pace is too slow, and I do believe there is still much work that needs to be done to make sure Congressional offices reflect the makeup of Congressional districts and the Democratic electorate,” Clyburn said.

 A Turkey court sentenced 17 top former military officials to 141 life terms on Thursday in one of the largest trials related to the 2016 coup attempt.

The verdicts involving 224 suspects took place at a court in Sincan prison in the capital, Ankara.

The accused were on trial on charges of crimes against the state, leading an armed group, attempting to assassinate the president, and the deaths of 249 people. The trial started in 2017.

“Aggravated” life sentences for the 17 are the harshest prison terms in Turkey since it abolished the death penalty in 2002, as there is no chance of parole and conditions are extra harsh.

Turkey blames United States-based Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen for the attempted coup on July 15, 2016, by a faction of the military.

Gulen has denied any role in the failed coup, which left 251 dead and more than 2,000 wounded. Turkey has failed to secure his extradition.

Defendants

Among the defendants was former Air Force Commander Akin Ozturk, who was accused of leading the Peace at Home Council, which allegedly coordinated the mutinous soldiers. He was the top suspect after Gulen.

State-run Anadolu news agency said life sentences given to people accused of being the ringleaders of the attempted putsch also included Ali Yazici, who was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s military aide.

Reporting from Istanbul, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said Thursday’s trial was one of the most important among those held in Turkey since 2016 because it implicates Ozturk and Yazici as key players.

“They are accused of attempting to overthrow the government and for ceasing the headquarters of the military,” said Ahelbarra. “This explains why today they received some of the heaviest penalties handed down to the defendants.”

He noted that Ozturk also faces another trial relating to his alleged role in attacks on the Turkish parliament.

“The upcoming trial is about the Akinci airbase in Ankara and one of the key defendants in the case is once again Akin Ozturk – who is accused of giving orders to fighter jets to take off from there and drop bombs onto the Turkish parliament in Ankara,” said Ahelbarra. 

Twenty-six generals among those on trial also included Lieutenant-Colonel Levent Turkkan, who was the aide to then-Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar. Akar was appointed defence minister in July 2018.

Of the defendants, 176 were now under arrest, 35 tried in absentia, and 13 still at large, Anadolu said. The trial of the 13 considered fugitives will continue separately.

There were heightened security measures outside the courtroom as drones flew above.

Ongoing trials

In April, Erdogan said that, in total, 20,226 people have been convicted on charges related to the coup attempt.

He said more than 31,000 people have been sacked from the police, 15,000 from the military, and 4,000 from the judiciary in its aftermath.

Since July 2016, tens of thousands of people have been arrested over alleged links to the coup under a two-year state of emergency that ended last year.

But nationwide raids by police have continued and there are almost daily reports of public prosecutors issuing detention warrants for suspects over Gulen ties.

Nearly 290 coup-linked court cases have been launched, 261 of which ended with 3,239 defendants convicted, according to justice ministry figures.