RIGHTS-EGYPT: A Challenge to Torture at Last

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Jul 7 2002 (IPS) - An Egyptian court has postponed sentencing in a high-profile case of four police officers charged with killing a suspect in a robbery case.

More than the officers, it is the judicial system on trial. Torture by the police has been routine in Egypt, but it is increasingly being challenged now.

The prosecution charge in this case is that the officers, a city police station commander and three of his subordinates illegally detained Sayed Eissa and his friend Moustafa Abdel Samie for 45 days on suspicion of car theft.

During the detention, the officers allegedly beat up the two suspects and used electric shocks to force confessions from them. Eissa died from his wounds, but Abdel Samie survived to report the incident.

The court granted the defence team until August 5 at the hearing on Sunday to prepare its reply to the prosecution charge.

Human rights groups following the case say the fact that Minister of In terior Habib El-Adly has personally ordered the trial is a positive step.

“It sends a very important message,” says Hafez Abu Sa’ada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR). “Police officers believe they are not accountable for torture, but the picture has changed recently,” he says. “Many cases have been referred to court… it is a signal from the Ministry of Interior to all police officers that they will face trial if they are involved in torture.”

This year four separate cases of police and prison officials involved in torture have been referred to the criminal court.

“This is something we have never seen before,” says Abu Sa’ada. “We encourage the government to take such steps.”

But most torture cases still never reach court. Often the victims are blindfolded during beatings so that they cannot later identify the officers involved. Sometimes their families are threatened.

An EOHR report alleges that the police commander accused of killing Sayed Eissa had repeatedly threatened the wife and children of another civilian who reported ill treatment under detention.

Ministry of Interior officials say only a handful of rogue officers are behind the “isolated incidents”, but human rights groups say torture is common in police stations and prisons.

“Torture is systematically practised by the security forces in Egypt, in particular by the State Security Intelligence (SSI),” the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on torture said in a report last year. The SSI is the internal intelligence agency of Egypt.

Amnesty International has condemned the use of torture, which it claims is widespread in detention centres throughout the country.

“The most common reported methods were electric shocks, beatings, whipping, suspension by the wrists or ankles, suspension in contorted positions from a horizontal pole and various forms of psychological torture, including death threats and threats of rape or sexual abuse of the detainee or a female relative,” the group said in its 2002 annual report on Egypt.

Many former detainees recall visits to “Al-Salakhanah” (The Butchery), an interrogation centre equipped with canes, whips and a primitive electric shock apparatus. Torture is used to extract confessions, or to settle scores in cases where an aggrieved family pays the police to detain and beat someone.

“Torture is the overwhelming feature of interrogations and investigations,” says Ehab Salam, a lawyer with the Human Rights Centre for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRCAP). “The suspects are treated offensively and brutally without any respect to the minimum standards of the human rights.”

The trials now suggest that the government is cracking down on torture, but the moves are aimed at police officers and prison officials. No officer of the SSI has been convicted for torture.

Human rights organisations have called for abolition of the Emergency Law in force since 1981, which gives SSI officers wide-ranging authority to arbitrarily arrest and detain people. They have also demanded that SSI officers accused of torture be stripped of immunity and brought to trial.

“They are above the law,” says a former detainee. “They can do anything to you… anything.”