(Cairo, May 31, 2006) – President Hosni Mubarak should immediately order an
independent judicial investigation into last Thursday’s severe beatings by
security agents of political activists Karim al-Sha`ir and Mohamed al-Sharqawi,
Human Rights Watch said today. Police also sexually assaulted al-Sharqawi,
according to a written statement he smuggled out of prison.
The Egyptian government must investigate these attacks
and punish the perpetrators. President Mubarak should
put a stop to repeated outrages by agents of the state.
Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North
Africa
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On May 25, agents of the State Security Investigations (SSI) bureau of the
Interior Ministry arrested al-Sha`ir and al-Sharqawi as they were leaving a
peaceful demonstration in downtown Cairo. Both men said they were beaten in
custody.
“The Egyptian government must investigate these attacks and punish the
perpetrators,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North
Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “President Mubarak should put a stop
to repeated outrages by agents of the state.”
In his statement, al-Sharqawi wrote that his captors at the Qasr al-Nil
police station beat him for hours and then raped him with a cardboard tube.
Then they sent him to the State Security prosecutor’s office in Heliopolis.
His lawyer told Human Rights Watch that he saw al-Sharqawi at the
prosecutor’s office around midnight that night. “There wasn’t a single part
of his body not covered in bruises and gashes,” the lawyer said.
