Egyptian film-maker Shady Habash, who mocked El-Sisi in music video, dies in prison

Cairo [Egypt], May 3 : An Egyptian filmmaker imprisoned over a music video that mocked President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi died at a maximum-security facility on Friday after two years in detention without trial, his lawyer said.
The cause of death of the filmmaker, Shady Habash, 24, who died in Cairo's Tora Prison complex, was not immediately clear, Al Jazeera reported quoting his lawyer Ahmed el-Khwaga as saying on Saturday.
The lawyer said that Habash's health had been deteriorating for several days. He was hospitalised, and then returned to the prison on Friday evening where he died in the night.
Habash's death has brought new scrutiny to conditions in Egypt's notoriously crowded prisons, where many inmates are serving time for crimes they insist they did not commit, or have not been charged at all.
Earlier this year, a US citizen who had gone on a hunger strike as part of a six-year battle against what he insisted was wrongful imprisonment, died in prison of heart failure. According to rights groups, thousands are held in Egypt's jails awaiting trial.
The death also comes during the coronavirus pandemic, and overcrowded prison cells could be breeding grounds for the spread of the virus, which causes the illness COVID-19. Egypt has approximately 6,200 confirmed cases and more than 400 deaths.
However, there was no immediate comment from the interior ministry, which oversees Egypt's prison system.
The police arrested the 24-year-old filmmaker in March 2018 after he directed a music video by Ramy Essam, an Egyptian musician exiled in Sweden.
The video featured a song that mocked the general-turned-president, comparing him to a fruit date and condemning alleged government corruption.
The song's lyrics lambast "Balaha" - the name given to el-Sisi by his detractors in reference to a character in an Egyptian film known for being a notorious liar. The video has had more than five million views on YouTube.
In a Facebook post, Essam said: "Shady Habash has died. Shady was the kindest and bravest of people. He never hurt anyone. May God have mercy on him."
Essam, along with others among Habash's friends, also published a letter that Habash had written from prison in October wherein he spoke of his despair.
"Prison doesn't kill, loneliness does," he wrote, describing what he called his struggle to "stop yourself from going mad or dying slowly because you've been thrown in a room two years ago and forgotten."
"His psychological state was very bad," el-Khwaga said of Habash when he saw him for the last time two months ago.
Meanwhile, Galal el-Behairy, who wrote the song, was also arrested in 2018 after the video provoked the ire of the government when it went viral on social media.
El-Behairy was sentenced by an Egyptian military court to three years in prison after his conviction on charges of "insulting security forces" and "disseminating false news".