Human rights activists concede that the Ministry of Interior is now tougher on officers charged with torture, especially if the torture has led to death. Yet, they told Khaled Dawoud, a lot more needs to be done The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) claimed in a statement on Monday that Mohamed Othman, 25, died at a police station in the Misr Al- Kadima district nearly two weeks ago after the police subjected him to severe beating and torture. Othman's family told EOHR that he was stopped by two policemen on patrol as he was walking along the Nile at about 8.30pm on 27 May. After a row the two policemen started beating him up, the statement said. A few minutes later, two patrol cars under the command of Captain Ayman Mahgoub arrived on the scene. At least eight policemen, probably passengers in the two cars, then joined in beating Othman with their heavy batons for more than 10 minutes until he was unable to move, EOHR added. Later, he was handcuffed, taken into one of the cars and held at one of officers' rooms at Misr Al-Kadima police station. He was issued with a detention order pending investigation. Strangely though, Othman was not taken to the detention cell at the police station that night, raising EOHR suspicions that he was subjected to torture. EOHR quoted a man being held in the detention cell in the same police station as saying that Othman was brought there at 1pm the next day, 28 May. "[He] came in very bad condition. He was vomiting all the time, unable to move and slept on his face, not talking to anybody," the man said. "He stayed in the same condition until 7pm when he was summoned to the office of the head of the investigation unit. The officer ordered another inmate with a criminal record to carry Othman's dead body to his home," he added. The victim's family immediately filed a complaint at the prosecutor- general's office, demanding an investigation and a detailed forensic report on what caused Othman's death. "Othman's death raises to 12 the number of victims who have died as a result of torture in police stations over the past 15 months," said Said Abdel- Hafez, a lawyer and head of the fieldwork unit at EOHR. He added that a recent report issued by the group in late May also noted 11 other cases of people who were illegally detained without charge at police stations and subjected to torture. "Of course that is not the overall number of victims of torture. The majority of victims are usually afraid to report their cases and are simply happy they have been released from detention," he added. But Abdel-Hafez described as "a positive development" the way the Interior Ministry had recently dealt with officers charged with involvement in torture, especially when it led to death. Since the beginning of this year alone, four cases involving officers accused of torture in police stations and prisons were referred to criminal courts where they faces prison terms of up to seven years. "Two of these cases were referred to the prosecutor-general's office by Interior Minister Habib El-Adli personally. The two other cases were referred to trial by the prosecutor's office directly after investigation. This is something we have never seen before," Abdel-Hafez told Al-Ahram Weekly. In late March, the prosecutor-general referred to trial the head of Nasr City police station, his assistant and four policemen after they allegedly killed Sayed Eissa and badly tortured one of his friends, Mustafa Abdel-Samie. The two were held illegally for nearly 45 days on suspicion of car theft, and were thrown into the street following severe torture. Eissa died, but his friend, Abdel-Samie, survived and reported the case. Sentences in the now high-profile trial will be issued on 7 July. A month earlier, in late February, police officers at El-Waili police station could not find a suspect they were seeking. Instead they arrested his brother, Ahmed Youssef, and tortured him to find out where his brother was hiding. Ahmed Youssef died. When relatives and neighbours found out about the death, they surrounded Waili police station and pelted it with stones. There have been similar incidents in recent years to protest against the death of suspects in police detention. The Waili case was also referred to trial by the prosecutor-general's office. This year a criminal court sentenced the head of the notorious Wadi El- Natroun prison to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of torturing an inmate to death and falsifying documents to hide the crime. "EOHR welcomes this development and acknowledges that the Interior Ministry has recently been more serious in dealing with cases of torture," Abdel-Hafez said. "[Yet] we still have a long way to go in order to be rid, totally, of this deeply rooted practice." EOHR and other human rights groups such as the Human Rights Centre for the Assistance of Prisoners, which is now leading a year-long campaign to combat torture, demand changed in the law to allow victims to file their complaints directly with the court instead of first going through the prosecutor-general's office. They also seek better training of police officers -- especially those working in police stations -- in modern investigation methods so that they do not resort to violence in order to obtain confessions from suspects. Abdel-Hafez said that in many incidents torture cases were not referred to court because the victims were not able to identify the officers who carried out the torture. "Usually the victims are blindfolded, and if they are not, they do not know the names of the officers at the police station." In other incidents, police officers suppress evidence linked to the practice of torture. "We have received several reports on how officers fabricate records at police stations, getting false testimonies from other inmates that the victims died in a fight, or other circumstances, to avoid being accused of torture," Abdel-Hafez said. The government , however, denies the charges made by human rights groups and insists that their claims are exaggerated. Assistant Interior Minister Mohamed Shaarawi, in recent statements to the daily newspaper Al- Ahram, maintained the long-adopted official line on torture in police stations: that "excesses" occurred or there were "individual violations" by particular officers, but definitely no official policy was being pursued. Shaarawi said that over the past three years only 11 cases of excessive use of force by police officers had been reported. "They are individual, limited and sporadic cases that should not make us ignore the heroic role played by police officers," he said. He added that officers, especially those working on investigating crimes, risked their lives daily and dealt with "a category of extremely violent and criminal outlaw". There were 3,000 officers in Egypt, he added, spread over 320 criminal investigation departments at police stations all over the country. "This confirms that we are not facing a disturbing phenomenon which indicates a general trend among officers," he added. Shaarawi also noted the important role of the Interior Ministry's regular inspections of police stations and prisons to look into whether violations were taking place. But, according to Abdel-Hafez of the EOHR, in the case of Nasr City police station where Eissa died in March, the officers were in the habit of hiding tortured inmates on the building's roof until the inspection ended.
