Egyptian Prisoner on Death Row for 2014 Murder Remains in Medical Facility Without Surgery

Egyptian authorities have kept Ahmed al-Waleed al-Shal in a prison medical facility since 2023 without performing surgery for an apparent brain mass, AllAfrica reported. A 2026 brain image showed the mass had doubled in size, yet a doctor told al-Shal he had nothing wrong and that his symptoms were psychological.

Al-Shal was arrested on March 6, 2014, outside his university and forcibly disappeared for days.

Authorities later charged him and 23 others with the February 28, 2014, murder of a court guard in al-Mansoura. A criminal court convicted and sentenced him to death on September 7, 2015, in a mass trial. The Cassation Court upheld the sentence in June 2017.

Four of the 24 defendants were acquitted. Al-Shal's mother, Nouseila Haroun, told Human Rights Watch that officers at National Security Agency sites in al-Mansoura and Cairo tortured him with electric shocks, cigarette burns, suspension by his legs, and insertion of a wooden stick to force confessions. Prosecutors ignored his request for a forensic exam despite visible wounds.

A prison doctor noted that nothing negated the possibility the wounds matched his account. Al-Shal had undergone two surgeries between 2002 and 2005 to remove a benign brain tumor. In prison he developed balance problems, right-hand motor disorder, headaches, dizziness, and double vision.

After repeated complaints he received an MRI in 2023 that identified a mass requiring urgent surgery, but authorities returned him to prison instead. Amr Magdi, senior Middle East and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated that the authorities inflicted immense suffering by failing to provide necessary care.