Torture and national security in Egypt under Sisi
Abstract
Since July 2013, when the Egyptian army overthrew the country's first freely elected president, torture has returned as a trump card to the security services, and lack of accountability for its systematic practices has helped determine the form of authoritarian government led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Sisi tried to reach political stability at all costs, which gave the Ministry of Interior - the country's main security institution - full freedom to commit the same violations that sparked the 2011 uprising.
The regular police and the National Security Sector of the Ministry of the Interior have widely used arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture against suspected opponents, many of whom are alleged to sympathize with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main group opposed to Sisi. The Egyptian Co-ordination of Rights and Freedoms (the Egyptian Coordination) , an independent human rights organization, identified 30 persons who died under torture while in police custody and other detention facilities of the Ministry of the Interior between August 2013 and December 2015. In 2016, The Egyptian lawyer said she had received 830 complaints of torture and that 14 others had died of torture in custody.
Human Rights Watch said in a report released today that police officers and the "national security sector" in Egypt, under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, routinely torture political detainees in methods including beatings, electrocution, stressful situations and sometimes rape.
detainee tortured between 2014 and 2016, shows how police officers and national security routinely use torture during their investigations to force suspected dissidents to confess, disclose or punish information .
Description former detainees who were interviewed for this report constitutes a series of integrated actions to commit abuses in order to fabricate cases against suspected opponents, starting with arbitrary arrest, and then continue to torture and interrogation during the forced disappearances, and ends by bringing them in front of prosecutors, who are often pressuring detainees to confirm their confessions Without taking any measures to investigate the violations to which they are subjected. In many cases, prosecutors encouraged Human Rights Watch to abuse them by confirming the false dates of detention by national security agents who alleged they had arrested the suspects a day before they were brought to the Public Prosecutor's Office, effectively erasing the official record of concealment Forced. A prosecutor threatened to return a detainee to torture. 2 took part in beatings themselves, according to former detainees and their families .
Each of these steps violated the Egyptian Constitution, which clearly prohibits unjustified detention and interrogation without a lawyer, and demands that detainees be allowed to remain silent and brought to the Public Prosecution within 24 hours and immediately informed of their detention and access to a lawyer and family member. The Constitution prohibits torture, intimidation, coercion, "physical or moral" harm against detainees, and establishes that torture is not a statute of limitations. Also states that any statement made by a detainee under torture or the threat of torture should be ignored. These standards reflect Egypt's obligations under the most basic rules of international human rights law, which prohibit torture in all circumstances. But Egypt did not meet them.
Former detainees interviewed in this report said that their experiences usually began with raiding their homes at dawn or by arresting them from the street near a place they knew to be visiting, such as a home, university or work place. Police or national security officers did not show the suspects an arrest warrant or tell them the reason for their arrest, in any of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch. In some cases, family members were arrested at the same time. Then transfer the suspected elements to police stations or national security headquarters .
Of the 20 cases documented by Human Rights Watch, 13 were tortured at national security headquarters, 5 at police stations, and 2 at both locations. Six men were tortured at the National Security headquarters inside the Ministry of the Interior, near Lazoghli Square in Cairo, where detainees have been subjected to torture for decades. In five cases, security agents used torture to force suspects to read pre-recorded confessions in front of the camera to record videos occasionally posted by the Ministry of the Interior on social media channels .
The testimonies in this report represent only a few of the many cases of torture documented by Human Rights Watch under Sisi, including children tortured in Alexandria after being arrested for demonstrating; men who were tortured by members of the National Security and Military Intelligence after a bombing in Kafr El Sheikh; The former Finance Ministry and his brother, who were tortured with electric shocks by national security agents to force the Chancellor to recognize him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Journalists and NGOs have recorded dozens of additional cases since 2013 .
According to the detainees, the typical torture session begins with the blindfolded, handcuffed and handcuffed detainee being subjected to electric shock by the detainee, often in sensitive places such as the ears or head. At the same time, they slap, stab, or beat the suspect with sticks and metal bars. If the detainee does not provide satisfactory answers to their initial questions, the elements increase the duration of the electric shocks and use the trapping device on other parts of his body, including her genitals. Investigators also use electrified wires sometimes.
After electrical shocks, security uses two main methods to inflict severe pain on suspects. In the first, the items tie the suspect's hands behind his back, pull his hands, hang his hands on the top edge of the door, and lift him above the ground, an abnormal position that causes severe pain in the back and shoulders, and sometimes causes them to be removed. Some elements pull the suspect legs to increase the pain. In other forms of this method, the suspect hangs his cuffs on a hook in the ceiling, lifting unnaturally from the back. The position of the second method, called the "fraka" or "grill", involves putting the suspect on his back on the ground, placing his knees on a stick or rod, and damaging his hands around the penis from the other side, connecting the penis between the twisted elbows and the back of his knees, Hands together above his feet to secure the position. When the penis lifts the penis and suspends the suspect in the air, it looks like a chicken on a grill, and the weight of the suspect causes severe pain in the shoulders, knees and arms.
Suspected elements in these situations of torture keep time periods ranging from minutes to hours, often beating and electrocuting, hanging and unable to defend themselves.
In several cases, security personnel have exceeded these usual methods of torture. A former detainee told Human Rights Watch that the elements at a police station in Cairo raped him repeatedly by inserting a stick into the anus. Another said national security officers at the Interior Ministry threatened to rape him. A former detainee of national security forces at a facility in Giza Governorate said that they had taken one of his fingernails with a machete and another with their teeth. Another Interior Ministry detainee said that an element of national security had inserted a metal nail wrapped in electric wire in his arm to increase the pain of electric shocks. A lawyer who was detained by members of the National Security in a facility in the province of Gharbia said they wrapped a wire around his penis to hit him with electricity. Three former detainees told Human Rights Watch that security agents threatened to torture their family members if they did not confess.
In most cases, police and national security officers stopped using torture once they obtained confessions or names of suspects' friends and acquaintances. But that did not mean that their plight was over. In almost all cases, torture and interrogation served as a prelude to prosecution proceedings, some of which ended in trial.
Only one of the 19 former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch, a student beaten by police, was shocked by electric shocks, hung to the ceiling and raped by a stick. The agents took him to the prosecutor within 24 hours of arrest, as required by Egyptian law. 10 detainees said that the elements detained them illegally for more than a week before being brought to the prosecutor. Wait 8 of these men at least a month to see the prosecutor. None of them had been allowed access to lawyers or relatives in advance. Of the 10 detainees who saw the prosecutor within a week of their detention, the majority of the detainees were not allowed access to a lawyer even during interrogation.
International law requires detainees to be brought promptly to a judge, usually within 48 hours, to review their detention, but Egyptian law does not provide such protection. The Egyptian Code of Criminal Procedure grants the Public Prosecution , not the judges, the power to renew pre-trial detention in all serious cases involving political or national security offenses, allowing the Public Prosecution to temporarily detain detainees for up to 18 months. To death or life imprisonment, for up to two years. Although the judges ultimately have to review the arrest of the suspect during this period, the decision to renew the detention is the prerogative of the prosecution.
All former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch, with the exception of one of them, said they had informed prosecutors of their torture and in no case testified that they had taken any action to investigate their allegations, as required by international law. This contradicts allegations made by Egypt in international forums that prosecutors investigate all allegations of violations.
Systematic torture and impunity have led to the creation of an environment in which those exposed to abuse do not see any opportunity to bring the perpetrators to account. Most detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch did not try to seek accountability after the prosecution ignored their allegations of torture. Most of them also found themselves wanted by national security agents in new cases after their release, and believed that any further contact with the criminal justice system would generate them a further long suffering of abuse and concealment.
The specific practices documented in this report are certainly not new. Human Rights Watch recorded its use for the first time in early 1992, and wrote that the State Security Intelligence Service (SSI) , renamed the National Security Sector, had a "system for training state security personnel on torture techniques." In 1996, the UN Committee Against Torture concluded that "torture is systematically practiced by security forces in Egypt, particularly by the SSI." A second investigation into the case of Egypt, published by the Committee against Torture in June 2017, concluded that "the perpetrators of acts of torture have almost always escaped punishment and that" the facts gathered by the Committee lead "to the inevitable conclusion that torture is a practice Methodology in Egypt ".
This and other reports published by various non-governmental organizations over the past 25 years show that police and national security agents have for decades committed identical types of torture in police stations, security headquarters and national security headquarters throughout the country, indicating that the practice was At that time and is still systematic and widespread. Under international law, torture can be considered a crime against humanity, tried before the International Criminal Court if committed " under a plan or policy or in the context of a large-scale commission." Human Rights Watch believes that the epidemic of torture in Egypt is probably a crime against humanity.
Despite the nationwide uprising in 2011, which was largely fueled by the brutality of the security forces, torture continued despite four successive changes in the regime. This result was not inevitable. After the uprising, SSR led the agenda of almost every political group and protest movement. The time has come to rebuild the Ministry of the Interior, the institution that represents the heart of state terrorism for thousands of Egyptians. But from the start, both military and civilian governments have blocked reform, and there has been no thorough investigation into the Ministry of the Interior's violations of the years preceding the intifada and its outbreak.
Since the army overthrew former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have re-established and expanded the repressive tools that were known under President Hosni Mubarak for nearly 30 years before the intifada. Cases of enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in prisons, torture and extrajudicial killings increased markedly after March 2015, when Sisi Magdi Abdel Ghaffar was appointed Minister of Interior, a senior official of the State Security and National Security for three decades. On April 9, 2017, Sisi declared a state of emergency following the suicide bombings carried out by the Islamic State (also known as "Dahesh") in two churches that killed 45 people. The law focused on the powers of arrests and surveillance
Police detention and national security. This state of emergency remains in place at the time of writing.
Even before the state of emergency, the security forces worked with complete impunity. During its review, Human Rights Watch found publicly available only six cases in which prosecutors managed to convict members of the Ministry of the Interior accused of torturing detainees since July 2013, among hundreds of such allegations. None of these provisions appeared to have been upheld by the Court of Appeal at the time of writing. To date, no court in modern Egyptian history has issued a final conviction against an element of state security or national security for violations.
Law enforcement officials are free to enjoy the environment set by the Emergency Law, and judges and prosecutors in charge do not question their work. At the same time, the authorities have undermined Egypt's efforts to combat torture by closing the Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, the country's leading organization dedicated to documenting and treating victims, and by opening investigations against judges and lawyers who have enacted anti-torture legislation. To date, the effect of the judgment of 3 July 2017 on the Supreme Administrative Court, which instructs the Ministry of the Interior to investigate the whereabouts of all missing citizens, including those who have allegedly been forcibly disappeared, has not been achieved. In the past, the Interior Ministry has repeatedly ignored these provisions.
At the same time, government officials at the highest level still deny the seriousness of the plague of torture. Mubarak's position is that torture is sometimes committed only by individuals in individual cases. When Sisi and Abdel Ghaffar were asked about torture in Egypt, they used specific sentences that torture does not occur in prisons, which seems to be an attempt to avoid discussing torture rampant elsewhere in police stations and national security headquarters. Despite the stark evidence against the statements, Egypt's delegation to the UN Human Rights Council during the country's comprehensive periodic review in late 2014 stated that it " investigates all allegations of torture and ill-treatment and brings the perpetrators to justice."
The report states that these statements are incorrect and reiterates the same findings reached by Human Rights Watch and other organizations during years of work that the legal framework criminalizing torture in Egypt is still inadequate and does not meet Egypt's basic obligations under international law, And those who are abusive to escape justice. It also documents that the Public Prosecution - the authority empowered to investigate violations of the Ministry of the Interior - regularly ignores complaints of torture, explicitly or implicitly supporting its use by the police or national security elements, rarely exercises its legal authority to conduct unannounced inspection visits to police stations, Such visits are final to national security headquarters. The National Council for Human Rights, the only other body authorized by the law for visits to detention, can only do so with the permission of the police or national security officials concerned, making this power virtually meaningless.
Human Rights Watch recommends that Sisi immediately direct the Ministry of Justice to establish a special prosecutor or inspector general to investigate and prosecute complaints of ill-treatment by officers and elements of the Ministry of the Interior, and to maintain an accessible record of complaints received and results of investigations. At the same time, we urge the Parliament to amend the definition of torture in article 126 of the Penal Code to bring it into line with the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and to tighten penalties in Article 129 on the use of violence by officials, Provided for in article 282 on torture in unlawful detention in order to make such sentences commensurate with the gravity of the offenses.
Under international law, torture is treated as a crime under universal jurisdiction, which means that it can be prosecuted anywhere. States are required to arrest and investigate any person on their territory suspected of involvement in torture and to prosecute him if there is sufficient evidence of his conviction. Although it is better for torture victims to be held accountable in the country where the torture took place, universal jurisdiction operates as a safety net when States, such as Egypt, are unwilling or unable to properly investigate and prosecute those suspected of torture.
In the absence of a serious effort by the Sisi government to counter the spread of torture, we urge UN member states to investigate and permit the prosecution of Egyptian security officials and other officials accused of torture and, if necessary, prosecute them in their courts in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction