Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps, if any, they have taken to enquire about the health and well-being of Dr Essam El-Haddad and his son Gehad El-Haddad, who are being detained by Egyptian authorities.

Egypt is a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Human Rights Priority Country and the UK regularly raises concerns about human rights with the Government of Egypt. We are concerned about reports of torture and mistreatment in detention in Egypt. We have not raised these individual cases with the Egyptian authorities, but will continue to urge them to ensure all detainees are treated in accordance with relevant international human right standards.

We have raised these concerns in public, including in our statement at the UN Human Rights Council on 12 March and through the FCO’s Human Rights Priority Country reports, and in private in meetings with Egyptian Government representatives in London and in Cairo. We shall continue to call on Egypt to take action to release journalists and political detainees who remain imprisoned, review mass judicial decisions and remove restrictions on civil society.