As the horrors of Abu Ghraib continue to unravel, Egyptian human rights groups are stepping up their campaign to combat home-grown torture, reports Amira Howeidy Even from afar, the pictures hanging on the freshly painted walls of the Al-Azbekiya headquarters of the Egyptian Association against Torture (EAAT) are unmistakably clear. In one of them, a man is naked, his back bruised, charred and scarred with clear signs of torture. In another, a man seems crippled, lying on a bed with his pencil-thin legs bare, scarred and discoloured. The other photos feature similarly heart-wrenching horrors. "Torture is a reality," said EAAT psychiatrist Abdallah Mansour. "The corpses and the photos of the victims are there. The testimonies of those who survived torture are there as well. The perpetrators are also there, and still using torture. As long as they go unpunished, torture will continue." Speaking at an EAAT press conference specifically held to "expose the lies being told by the Interior Ministry to Human Rights Watch [HRW]," Mansour emphasised that torture was "not so much a legal issue as it is a political one. Torture in Egypt is a result of political oppression." After the EAAT issued a statement last year claiming seven people had died as a result of being tortured while in police custody, the Interior Ministry refuted the group's claims in a booklet delivered to HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth during a visit Roth made to Egypt last February. The ministry denied the allegations, offering various alternate explanations for the deaths; these ranged from the victim hanging himself, dying of fatigue or being killed by other inmates. It also accused the EAAT of defaming the ministry by participating in a "suspicious" human rights campaign against Egypt. At the EAAT's 21 June press conference, the media was given a 17-page report responding to the ministry's claims. "We believe the public needs to know what happened to those victims," the group said. "Remaining silent, and then denying and lying about this aggression on the dignity and bodies of citizens inside police stations and state security offices," said EAAT President Aida Seif El-Dawla, "is what really harms Egypt's image." While officials continue to skirt the issue, human rights groups have recently stepped up their campaign to monitor and expose what they call systematic and institutionalised violations of human rights by the security apparatus. The latest high-profile case centred on Akram Zuheiri, a 40-year-old member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who died on 9 June while in police custody. Although the Interior Ministry denied allegations that Zuheiri was tortured, witnesses told his family and the Brotherhood another story altogether. Brotherhood member Ali Abdel-Fattah of the Alexandria Engineers' Syndicate told the audience at the EAAT press conference that Zuheiri -- a diabetic who broke his pelvic bone and was left without treatment in prison for nine days until he died -- was killed "passively". A 15-member parliamentary delegation that visited the Torah prison where Zuheiri was held confirmed these claims in a report issued on 16 June. Witnesses told the delegation that Zuheiri died of grave negligence "after eight days of severe torture". Torture "is not only electrocution or whipping" the report said, but also "leaving an injured person that long in severe pain without treatment... The worst kind of torture is to leave the patient to die slowly." The report also included interviews with Brotherhood detainees who were subjected to torture at one of State Security Intelligence's (SSI) headquarters. The men, who were remanded in custody at Torah prison pending investigations by the prosecutor, were illegally transferred to the SSI, where they were tortured. Egyptian law does not allow the transfer of defendants in the prosecutor's custody without the prosecutor's permission or knowledge. One of the detainees, engineer and businessman Mohamed Osama, was described in the report as more of a "skeleton than a human being". He appeared to have "problems talking and breathing, and was involuntarily moving his hand towards his heart". Osama told the delegation that he was completely "stripped... and electrocuted on sensitive areas of my body. This procedure was repeated over six days. My hands were tied across my back throughout." The report concluded that, "there are cases of brutal and inhuman torture which constitute a serious breach of human rights." It called on parliamentary speaker Fathi Sorour, who was addressed throughout the report, to take the necessary measures to see that the perpetrators of these violations were brought to justice. Thus far, the plea has been ignored. Official reactions to torture allegations usually fall into one of two categories. There are either blanket denials, or claims that torture was limited to "individual" cases. This apparent lack of seriousness in addressing the issue continues to provoke rights groups into exposing even more violations. It also seems to have inspired new, and sometimes unexpected, leaps into the fray. The latest initiative in this respect is the Sawasya Centre for Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination, a civic company headed by lawyer and Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud. According to Abdel-Maqsoud, the centre's 30-member board includes figures from a spectrum of political leanings, including veteran left-wing lawyer Nabil El-Hilali, Nasserist MP Hamdin Sabahi and Saudi reformist Sohaila Zein El-Abedine. Abdel-Maqsoud told Al-Ahram Weekly that Sawasya was "not a Brotherhood organisation, far from it, and any members of the group are here in their personal capacity". Asked if the systematic clampdowns on the Brotherhood and the repeated arrests of the group's members would be on the centre's agenda, Abdel-Maqsoud stressed that Sawasya would be "open to everyone and anyone who suffers from oppression and discrimination, or whose human rights are violated". Sawasya will even include a unit -- the first of its kind -- for students who are subjected to arrest and occasionally disqualified from college for their political affiliations. Although Islamists, including the Brotherhood, have been both the principal victims of torture, as well as the primary targets of the 23-year-old emergency law (independent rights groups claim there are 17,000 political detainees, the majority of whom are suspected Islamists being held without trial), many observers were surprised that members of this group had decided to delve into a field of activism widely perceived as Western-oriented. "This is precisely the perception we are trying to fight," said Abdel-Maqsoud. "Human rights values were first introduced by Islam, before this concept was devised [in the 20th century]. We want to make it clear that Islamists are not against human rights, and this is a major misunderstanding that we shall be working on." Abdel-Maqsoud said Egypt needed "more rights groups -- not only because of the magnitude of the violations, but also because of the size of the population". The EAAT's Seif El-Dawla described the situation in Egyptian prisons, police stations and detention centres as "very bad. What happened in Abu Ghraib happens here every day," she said. "The only difference is that there were cameras in Abu Ghraib." On Sunday, 13 rights groups and NGOs, including the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, announced the formation of the Egyptian Human Rights Organisations Collective -- a merger that would create an "organisational structure for dialogue, coordination, joint work and solidarity between the various Egyptian human rights groups". Ironically, this surge in human rights activity follows closely on the heels of the government-appointed National Council for Human Rights' (NCHR) failure to present parliament with a proposal to lift the emergency law (widely perceived as its primary mission), after most of its members reportedly voted against the proposal.
