The Egyptian government and its security services regularly practice torture and use counterterrorism as an excuse, according to a report released yesterday by the Federation Internationale des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH).
FIDH, along with its Egyptian partner organizations, presented the new report at a press conference held at the Journalists’ Syndicate in downtown Cairo.
“The use of torture remains a major implement of the government in its counterterrorism strategy,” said Stéphanie David, the North Africa and Middle East desk director for FIDH. “Torture and other ill-treatments are systematic in places of detention, police stations, facilities run by the state security services, and prisons.”
The press conference was also attended by Aida Seif El Dawla, director of the Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture and Hafez Abu Seada, president of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. Both organizations contributed to the FIDH report “Counter-terrorism Against the Background of an Endless State of Emergency.”
Although the report focuses on torture in relation to terrorism, Seif El Dawla pointed out that the problem pervades Egyptian law enforcement. “The majority of victims of the state of emergency are not political dissidents,” Seif El Dawla said. “People get rounded up from the street and when they do not accept officers’ verbal abuse they have to spend seven days at the police station suspended from the wall, stripped, beaten and electrocuted.”
The Nadim Center provides psychological support and legal medical reports for victims of torture. The center aided the FIDH in researching the report on Egypt.
Much of the report deals with specific legal mechanisms that encourage torture in Egypt, particularly Law Number 97 (1992) and the Emergency Law. Law 97, which was passed amid a spate of terrorist attacks in Egypt, establishes the parameters for terrorism related offenses and gives the state wide discretion in detaining and interrogating suspects.
The Emergency Law of 1958, which has been in force since President Anwar el-Sadat’s assassination in 1981 is “used to justify many crimes and acts of violence by the Government which gravely contradict the Constitution and human rights,” the report says.
Abu Saeda said at the conference that Egypt “should put a timeframe and urge the government to stick to this timeframe for repealing the Emergency Law.”
The Emergency Law is up for renewal in May.
The report also criticizes the legal definition of torture in Egypt. Abuse by police or security services is only defined as torture if it is employed with the aim of obtaining a confession.
“The definition of the word torture [in Egypt] totally contradicts the definition in international law and treaties,” said Abu Saeda.
The FIDH supports its claims of widespread torture in Egypt with examples based on testimony from those who say they have been tortured. People with ties to Islamist groups, as well as several bloggers and a dual Pakistani/Egyptian citizen were blindfolded, stripped naked, beaten, electrocuted, and threatened with death, among other kinds of mistreatment. In most of the cases cited the detainees were not notified of their charges or given access to legal representation.
The report offers many recommendations to the Egyptian government, including exempting civilians from military courts and conducting internal investigations into allegations of torture. Furthermore, the report says that the international community, particularly the United States and the European Union, should pressure Egypt to abandon torture.
Egypt’s participates in the United States’ controversial rendition program in which terror suspects are sent to third-party countries for interrogation.
In related news, the government-sponsored National Council on Human Rights submitted its annual report to the president yesterday.
