Torture 'systematic' in Egypt

2004-05-31 12:32

Cairo, Egypt - Torture is "systematic" in Egypt and there is little legal recourse for its victims, an Egyptian human rights group said in a report issued on Sunday, demanding more legal protection for targeted individuals.

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, in a report titled "Torture in Egypt, a practice with no deterrent", said 15 people have died as a result of torture in the last year, and a total of at least 120 in the past 10 years.

"Despite the Egyptian government saying that it intends to improve its human rights record and begin political reform, torture has not been tackled in its police stations, jails and prisons," the report said.

Individuals were being assaulted with "hands, feet, sticks, whips, cables and metal chains, tortured using hot water and electrocuted", as well as being subject to "sexual and immoral assaults".

"Police officers, when a crime occurs, rely primarily on indiscriminate arrests of suspects and the use of torture as a way to quickly gain information," it said.

The report said Egyptian law gives police officers "wide and unlimited powers" but reduces the legal rights of suspects under investigation. The law also prevents torture victims from filing suits directly against the police officers, it said.

While some perpetrators of torture had been prosecuted, the report said, most sentences were light and provided little indication that the state was serious in any crackdown on this practice.

In most cases of torture that have gone to court, police officers received light sentences that were condemned by rights organisations.

In March, three officers were sentenced to one year in jail and a three-year suspension from the police force for torturing a man in order to get him to confess to killing his daughter, who later turned up alive.

The report also said the continuing state of emergency has "fed the practice of torture".

Government officials were not available for comment. The government usually does not comment about such reports.

Egypt has been under emergency law since Islamic militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The law, renewed in February 2003 for another three years, gives authorities wide powers to arrest, detain and bring civilians before military courts, from which appeals are limited.

Last year, Amnesty International said "torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment continue to be practised systematically in detention centres".

- AP