CAIRO: Egypt's Supreme Military Council should take urgent steps to end torture, investigate all cases of abuse against peaceful demonstrators, and stop prosecuting civilians before military tribunals, Human Rights Watch said today. On the evening of March 9, 2011, Egyptian soldiers and men in civilian clothing destroyed a tent camp belonging to demonstrators in Tahrir Square's central garden, where people have camped off and on since January 28. Six witnesses told Human Rights Watch that between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., soldiers in the square looked on as gangs in street clothes seized and beat demonstrators. The witnesses said that the attackers also forcibly took demonstrators to the grounds of the Egyptian Museum, where soldiers, military police, and men in civilian clothes detained and physically abused them. “The Supreme Military Council has been ignoring credible reports of arbitrary arrest and torture,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “There can be no break from the abuses of the past while security forces – including military personnel – abuse people with impunity.” Four people detained by the army on March 9 told Human Rights Watch that their captors handcuffed them and beat them with electric cables, sticks, and metal pipes. Two of the four said they had been repeatedly shocked with electric stun devices. The army removed 190 of those detained in Tahrir on March 9 to military prisons, with plans to interrogate them over the next few days, said Ragia Omrane, a lawyer with the Hisham Mubarak Law Center who has been following military prosecutions of protesters. Beatings in Tahrir Square Six witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, as well as local media accounts, said that hundreds of men in civilian clothes armed with metal pipes, wooden sticks, and paving stones entered Tahrir square between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. and began attacking protesters there. The attacks continued for over an hour before the army entered the square. At that point, army officers and the attackers began arresting demonstrators and detaining them inside the Egyptian Museum, on the north side of Tahrir Square. “When we saw the army, we became calm because we thought they were coming to protect us,” said Aida Saif al-Dawla, from of the Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, who was in the square during the attacks. “Instead, they started destroying the tents while the thugs were beating us and chasing us away.” Galal A., another protest participant, told Human Rights Watch: “Soldiers were just arresting people, taking down the tents, [but] the thugs kept beating us with metal pipes. They stole everything that was with us, our personal belongings. About ten minutes [after the army arrived], they [army soldiers and men] had chased everyone from Tahrir.” Beatings, Torture at the Egyptian Museum Human Rights Watch interviewed four people who said that soldiers detained them inside the Egyptian Museum and severely tortured them there. “They took us to the museum. From the moment we entered the gate, we were beaten up using everything – wooden sticks, rods, electric cables, and pipes; they hit us everywhere, they slapped our faces repeatedly,” said Ahmad M., a 24-year-old demonstrator who asked that his real name not be used. “Inside the museum, I saw various people detained there – street sellers, foreigners, and political activists. I saw the memory cards of cameras get broken. People were forced to stand against the walls while military policemen beat them with wooden sticks.” Sharif Azer, an officer of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, told Human Rights Watch that soldiers also detained him inside the museum grounds. “I told an officer that I am from a human rights organization,” Azer said. “He answered, ‘We know nothing about human rights… We have been here for 40 days and this has to stop. We have the upper hand now and we know how to protect the people.'” Rasha Azab, a 28-year-old journalist for Al-Fajr Weekly, told Human Rights Watch she was handcuffed to an outside wall in a museum courtyard: “They were kicking me in my stomach and hitting me with wooden sticks and slapping my face. They called me dirty names. At one point, one of them came and tied my hands even more tightly. I stood there for four hours. I saw dozens of men being dragged on the floor, being whipped. All of them were the people who had stayed in the square. I heard people screaming from inside the museum, and [the soldiers] said, ‘You should thank God you are not inside.'” **The above is a press release from Human Rights Watch. Read the full story here. BM
