January 24, 2007
Egypt's Torture Video Sparks Outrage
Egyptian human rights activists have spent years searching for evidence of the torture of detainees in police stations, detention centers and prisons reports Time, but few were prepared for such evidence to begin arriving in the form of a graphic cell-phone video, where a man lies screaming on the floor of a police station as officers sodomize him with a wooden pole.
"The images, relayed via the Internet, shocked even human rights activists well aware of such abuses.
Human rights activists say that systematic police brutality is part of the Egyptian security apparatus, and has been on the rise. Torture became widespread in the early 1990s, but was focused on Islamist militants and their families. More recently, though, non-political detainees have also begun to report being tortured as police seek to extract confessions in criminal cases.
... Abu Saeda and other human rights campaigners are hoping that the publicity generated by the El Kabir case will encourage other victims to come forward, and that public prosecutors can be pressed to monitor police detention centers. They are also pressing for changes in Egypt's criminal law in order to hold the police hierarchy, and not only those who carry out torture orders, to be held accountable.
Related:
-- Egyptian Prisoner's torture sent to his friend's cell phones by police
-- Video phones expose torture in Egyp
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