Interior Minister deputy for information affairs Abdel Fattah Othman, said, “prisons have become hotels,” in response to accusation against the ministry of practicing torture and rape inside the prisons.
In a phone call with a talk show aired on the privately-owned ONTV channel on Tuesday, Othman denied news over torturing or raping saying, “The prisons’ authority has no interests to torture citizen or rape a prisoner. This is illogical.”
Othman accused some imprisoned activists of leaking false news over rape or torture of prisoners. “News over torture and rape never came up until some political activists were imprisoned.”
All news over rape or torture cases are currently being investigated, he added.
The claims by the minister, however, contradict countless reports, health records and testimony from prisoners over the extremely poor conditions of Egypt's jails and prisons. Though jails are meant to keep suspects who are innocent until proven guilty by court, many are tortured, cramped into small cells and suffer from severe health issues from the unsafe conditions inside the cells.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
