An NGO has voiced concern over latest revelations by the National Council for Human Rights concerning the alleged torture of detainees.
Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights has said it received with “great attention” the results of the NCHR’s report on its visit to prisoners at the Abu Zaabal Prison.
The organization pointed to the NCHR’s report on interviews with four inmates who reported assaults, solitary confinement, malnutrition and visit restrictions.
The organization demanded the Interior Ministry to provide “a permanent institutional mechanism to enable the concerned civil society organizations to visit prisons without complications and without restrictions”.
The NCHR had said prison officials rejected requests by its members to meet other prisoners.
It also called upon the presidency to reconsider custody detention rules for detained students “to guarantee that students are not harmed from its provisions, and to protect their educational future”.
Maat added that while torture cases might by “individual” and “unsystematic”, action should be taken against torture perpetrators. “The slowness in taking effective and dissuasive legislative steps, or adapting media speech that justifies those mistakes and individual practices will send negative messages to the Egyptian and international community, and it will contradict with the demands that were raised by the people in their first and second revolutions,” read the statement by the organization.
