The National Alliance for Supporting Legitimacy (NASL), the major bloc backing ousted former president Mohamed Morsi, has announced through one of its leaders that it has documented 54 cases of pro-Morsi female detainees who say they have been raped inside imprisonment facilities. One alleged victim, an Al-Azhar University student named Nada Ashraf, appeared in an interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr news channel saying that she had been raped and beaten by a police officer inside a police armoured vehicle during the dispersal of a protest on 28 December 2013 at Al-Azhar University. Ashraf, who decided to resort to the public prosecution authorities only this month, said she had not been taking part in the protest but that the officer had singled her out after she had berated him for sexually assaulting a female demonstrator. “He was grabbing the girl [the demonstrator] by her breasts as he arrested her,” Ashraf said in the Al-Jazeera interview. “I interfered by telling him, ‘do you think this makes you a man?' So he left the girl and grabbed me in the same way… Before he raped me, he said, ‘I'll show you I'm a man',” she recounted. Over 100 protesters were arrested and at least one killed following violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces on 28 December. “I was partially stripped of my shirt and trousers by the time I was thrown into the vehicle… then the officer boarded the vehicle, took off his trousers and raped me,” said Ashraf, who said she was married and had a son. “My life is destroyed,” she said. “Now I fear the thoughts of all men, even my own son and father.” Ahmed Seif Al-Islam, Ashraf's lawyer and the Director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, said that Ashraf had decided to file a complaint to the attorney general in the hope of getting retribution from the officer who had raped her rather than protecting her. “She was motivated by the referral of offenders for sexual harassment in Tahrir Square for trial,” Seif Al-Islam said, referring to 13 sexual harassers arrested during the inaugural celebrations for the new president in Tahrir Square who have been referred for trial by the prosecution. “The information Ashraf submitted to the prosecution is enough to know the name of the officer who raped her because the Interior Ministry has a list of all armoured vehicles deployed around Al-Azhar University and the names of the officers responsible for them,” he added. The central security soldiers and the armoured vehicle's driver, Seif Al-Islam said, had called the officer “the butcher” (al-gazzar), with the vehicle being stationed between the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Faculty of Studies, both relating to Al-Azhar University, on 28 December. The prosecutor-general, Hisham Barakat, ordered an investigation into Ashraf's allegations on 3 July. On 5 July, Ashraf gave her testimony to the Nasr City prosecution in an investigation into allegations that she had been sexually assaulted by a policeman. Hani Abdel-Latif, official spokesman for the Interior Ministry, denied the incident had occurred. “The incident is totally false,” Abdel-Latif told Al-Ahram Weekly. “The whole case is currently under investigation by the prosecution, and we are waiting for the results so as to take legal action.” “The ministry has, however, conducted a separate investigation, prior to the prosecution's one, and proved that her testimony is not true. It is also illogical and the spreading of such claims is being done to defame the security forces,” he added. “Ashraf was detained in December 2013 among a group of students following a violent protest and said nothing about the incident at that time. Only after being referred to the Criminal Court in June 2014 did her allegations emerge,” Abdel-Latif said. While security sources are denying what they call “rumours” of rape or other violations in Egyptian prisons, the National Alliance for Supporting Legitimacy claims that they have documented 54 cases. “A hearing committee established by the alliance in February has documented the accounts of 54 women detainees raped inside police stations, prisoner-transfer vehicles or in other locations,” the pro-Morsi Alliance leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Anadolu News Agency. “Some of the girls and women who were allegedly raped,” the source said, “underwent abortions after becoming pregnant, while others were unable to undergo abortions since the abortion would have been a danger to their lives. They are now in their seventh or eighth month of pregnancy.” According to the accounts, two cases had each been raped more than 14 times in one day, the source said, inside a riot police training camp used as a detention facility. “Another case said she had been subjected to rape daily for a whole week inside a police station,” the source added, refusing to provide further information regarding the women's identities or say where the alleged rapes had taken place in order supposedly to protect the women's safety. In the light of the absence of any official statistics regarding the numbers of detainees since last July, Wikithawra, an independent website that has documented detentions since the 25 January Revolution, states that over 41,000 people have been arrested during the last year and 53 have died in custody since Morsi's removal. The Associated Press issued a report in May listing the detention of 16,000 people in the last eight months, describing this as “Egypt's biggest round-up” in two decades. Responding to reports of torture and rape in prisons, deputy minister of the interior for media Abdel-Fattah Othman said in a phone interview with ON TV that prisons had become as “accommodating as hotels.” But the families and relatives of the detainees said that complaints sent to local official organisations had not led to results, leading them to make appeals internationally. The International Coalition for Egyptians Abroad, a group of expatriate Egyptians created in the wake of Morsi's ouster, announced early this month that it had submitted a memorandum to the United Nations Human Rights Council that contained documentation by local and international human rights organisations of “incidents of rape and sexual assault against female political detainees” in Egypt. The memorandum included the testimony of one girl who said policemen had hung her naked from the ceiling of her prison cell and taken turns sexually assaulting her, the Coalition said. In other cases, the report said, the police had stripped several girls of their clothes and “wiped the floor of the prison cells with their naked bodies.” Some female detainees had been forced by police to watch pornographic films, according to the report. Abdel-Latif denied the allegations, dismissing them as an attempt by Morsi supporters to “defame Egypt in international public opinion.” “The Interior Ministry welcomes delegations from Egyptian organisations working in the field of human rights, allowing them to visit prisons and to ensure that female prisoners are treated properly in accordance with the law,” he said. He also cited the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) recent report to prove the “fabrication” of such claims. “Various members of the NCHR visited the Al-Qanater Prison for Women to check the validity of the complaints,” he said. The NCHR dispatched a delegation on 7 July, included human rights activists George Ishak and Shahenda Makled, to visit the Al-Qanater Prison, which has 1,600 prisoners. The visit aimed to check the complaints sent to the NCHR and address the media about the exposure of some of the women prisoners to alleged rape or torture. “The delegation met with some of the prisoners from the military division in the Prison and with people allegedly involved in the incidents. It also met with the management of the prison,” the NCHR report reads. “It was confirmed after speaking with the prisoners that no rape or torture had taken place. However, a fight had taken place on 10-11 June 2014 between the prisoners in the military division, the jailors and the criminal prisoners, which had led to the injury of some of the prisoners, in addition to the injury of a prison warder.” “The following day, the warders inspected the prisoners in the military division and stripped some of the prisoners, according to their testimonies. In addition, there was an exchange of insults between the prisoners and the warders,” it says. The delegation highlighted the importance of promptly concluding investigations of the incidents of 10-11 June in Qanater Prison and the accompanying inspection of the prisoners in the military division. However, on June 23 ten Egyptian human rights organisations filed a joint complaint with the public prosecutor, requesting that the latter quickly investigate complaints of female prisoners being subjected to torture and physical and sexual abuse and demanding that protection be provided if the complaints were shown to be valid. Under successive governments, the police has been notorious for heavy-handed practices that have long been condemned by local critics and international human rights watchdogs. Among the NGOs which signed the new compliant were the Nadim Human Rights Centre, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, and the Centre for Women's Issues. The complaint said that female prisoners had suffered violence as a result of the failure of the government to investigate violations, protect detainees, or refer them to an official doctor who could report on their condition.
