CAIRO: Human Rights Watch condemned Thursday the military's reluctance to investigate the sexual assault of female protesters and other documented torture cases of more than 170 protesters arrested during a crackdown on Tahrir Square protest last March. “Egypt's military rulers are trying to cover up one of the most terrible abuses their forces committed this year,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “After the trauma of sexual assault, these women have been denied the protection of the law.” Military police officers conducted 'virginity checks' on 17 female protesters in military prison following their arrest in Tahrir. They were later released after being given suspended prison sentences. HRW said that one of the women who filed a lawsuit against the military received death threats via phone calls from anonymous sources, citing similar practices by state security police officers to threaten political dissidents during the Mubarak era. "This failure to investigate highlights the problems of the military justice system, in which the people investigating and prosecuting cases are within the chain of command and therefore not independent of those they are investigating," HRW said in a report titled "Egypt: Military ‘Virginity Test' Investigation a Sham". CNN previously quoted an anonymous senior military officer who confessed performing virginity checks on female protesters. "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)," said the high ranking officer. "We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were [virgins]," he added. The ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) promised in its 29th statement that allegations of torture cases will be investigated. HRW said it was told by a SCAF member that the incidents are still under investigation. “We cannot confirm or deny that this happened because it is currently under investigation,” HRW was told. A SCAF member also told HRW that SCAF had “issued instructions that this should not take place again.” “Investigations before military prosecutors typically take a week or two at most before they are referred to court or closed, and judges often conclude trials after one or two sessions,” Stork said in the HRW report. “Seven months later we can conclude that the generals, despite their promises, have no intention to investigate or prosecute anyone for this criminal sexual assault.”
