Yet another lovely US ally, its Egypt today. To follow is a Press Release from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information , known as HRInfo, quite an important portal in the region which has a substantial and informative English page.

What happened is the Egyptian Association of Human Rights and Legal Aid (AHRLA) publicly exposed the state's torture of prisoners (and its not blasting Madonna at them, its real torture). AHRLA got shut down on bogus charges, and civil society organizations decided to demonstrate in a show of support. HRInfo will share their offices with AHRLA so they can keep operating.

Press Release: Representatives of Human rights organization in Egypt decided to fight back against these flagrant police practices by using all the available legitimate measures e.g. labor strike, demonstrations, closing-down their websites and exposing the practices of the Egyptian government before international organizations and regional unions... The Egyptian government instead of working to improve its human rights records has shown a relentless desire to silence one of the most outspoken voices against these practices which are rife under the emergency laws and include unfair trails and gagged press.

Read the whole thing and check out the list of signatories.

I guess all these thug regimes deploy the same practices to hide their crimes from their own people and the international community.

Torture in Egypt is a widespread and brutal policy. From the website:

The previous weeks have witnessed an escalation of police brutality and torture in a number of police stations, known for their long record of breaking the law, torture and violation of human rights of citizens. The situation this time was characterized by heavy presence of police sergeants who seem to be competing with their seniors in the infliction of torture, as if promotion within the Ministry of Interior has become dependent on the number of citizens they kill under torture....

Some of those examples include Ahmed Badie Khafaga (May 2007, Damanhour police station), Saad Risk Allah Khalil (May 2007, Abou Hommos police station) and Tarek Foutouh El Imam (May 2005, Port Said police station) who the police claims have hanged themselves in their prison cells. It is noteworthy that Tarek had completed his prison sentence and had called his family, one day before his death, reminding them of his discharge from prison after 48 hours.

During this epidemic of death under torture, sergeants at Al Omraneyya police station psyched Nasser Sedik Gadallah from the third floor of his house. His wife and children watched as their father was thrown from the window, head down, which resulted in his immediate death. The same scenario happened before in March 2007 with Mohamed Nabawi Abdel Hafiz who was also thrown out of the window at Osim police station. The police claimed he had committed suicide.

Update: Key witness in Nour case found hanged in his cell.

"I confessed to forgery under pressure from officers from state security," Hassan told reporters on June 30, 2005, after his lawyer told the court he had changed his plea to not guilty.

The court disregarded his retraction and went on to sentence both Ayman Nour and Ayman Hassan to five years in prison. Nour, who came a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential elections in September 2005, says the authorities fabricated the case against him to exclude him from politics. The charge against Nour was that the endorsements he submitted to the authorities when he set up his liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party in 2004 contained forged signatures.

Posted by: JaneNovak at 10:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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