CAIRO: The Interior Ministry has denied allegations that 12-year-old Mohamed Mamdouh Abdel Aziz was tortured to death in a Mansoura police station after his arrest for petty theft, and asserted instead that he died of pneumonia. In a phone interview with Dream TV's magazine show Al Ashera Masaan, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Diaa El Din, said that a preliminary autopsy of the boy revealed a pulmonary infection was the cause of death. Diaa El Din stressed that Mohamed's family's claims that beatings and electrocution to which he was subjected while in police custody were mere allegations. Other ministry sources who preferred to remain anonymous told Agence France-Presse that Abdel Aziz's brother, currently in prison on charges of knife possession, said that Mohamed had sustained electrical burns prior to his arrest on Aug. 2. Abdel Aziz was accused of theft and arrested in the Dakahliah village of Shaha on August 2. He was detained in a local police station for six days, during which time his family claims he was savagely beaten and electrocuted. On August 8, neighbors found the boy's badly beaten and burned body lying in the street behind the village gas station, and his family rushed him to Mansoura Hospital. Four days later, he was pronounced dead. Human rights advocates are skeptical about the ministry's claims, although they say they are not surprised to hear them. "The Interior Ministry is blatantly lying about this, said Gamal Eid, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. "From the outset, Egyptian child protection laws totally ban any form of overnight detention for children. "What they are saying is expected, he added. "They are trying to cover up what they have done to this boy. According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, torture, police brutality and sexual assault in detention are system-wide problems in Egypt. In most cases, perpetrators are never punished. This is a source of alarm for rights groups, who say that Egypt has a legal obligation to eradicate the practice as a signatory of the Convention Against Torture. "This is a legally binding document. Whether or not the government will choose to abide by these agreements is not an issue, said Gasser Abdel Razek, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. "The Egyptian government made the choice to agree to this document, he added. "It is a legal and a constitutional obligation.
