Egypt: Investigate Reports of Torture on 19-year old in Tora Prison
On 24 March 2015, Alkarama sent an appeal to United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) regarding the case of Ammar Mohammed Mohammed Mahmoud, a 19 year-old Egyptian student who has been subjected to various acts of torture since his arrest in November 2014. Detained in deplorable conditions inside Tora prison, Ammar remains at high risk of torture and has not been brought before a judge yet.
On the 14 November, the police of Imbaba – a neighbourhood in northern Giza part of the Greater Cairo – arrested Ammar on the bus while he was coming back from the school, without showing a warrant or providing any justification for his arrest. Dragged out of the vehicle, he was forcibly brought to El Agouza police station where he was beaten, tortured, electrocuted and dragged on the floor upon arrival by police officers, in retaliation for his alleged political affiliations and in order to force him to confess to crimes he had not committed.
Still suffering from the torture he had been subjected to, he was brought before Imbaba's public prosecutor who, deliberately ignoring his state of health, charged him with "affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood" – a political movement designated in 2013 as a terrorist organisation by the Egyptian regime –, "incitement to violence" and "assault on security forces".
During his interrogation, Ammar asked the authorisation to see a doctor to make sure that his ill-treatment had not caused any lasting damage to his body, but notwithstanding the visible marks of torture, the prosecutor rejected his demand and prolonged his detention for four days for reasons of investigation, before renewing it for a further 15 days. After a difficult week of detention inside the police station, Ammar was transferred to Tora prison, a detention centre for which Alkarama has already received several reports of torture perpetrated against prisoners. "Even if you're released one day, you'll leave here handicapped or dead," a prison inspector once said to a detainee, who ended up handicapped as a consequence of the torture he was victim of at Tora Prison.
Ammar was eventually authorised to see a doctor, but only after the signs of torture had disappeared, leaving him without the possibility to file a complaint against the perpetrators – a practice commonly used by the authorities to avoid legal issues. More than four months after his arrest, Ammar has not yet been brought before a judge. Still detained in "life-threatening conditions" in Tora prison, he is left without any recourse to challenge his detention or to bring a lawsuit against the officers who tortured him.
Local remedies being obstructed for him and his family, the latter asked Alkarama to call upon the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) to ask the Egyptian authorities to guarantee Ammar's physical and psychological health and to thoroughly and independently investigate the reports of torture he made. Alkarama invites the SRT to send a request for invitation to the authorities, as they recently declared at the adoption of the UPR outcome they were considering inviting new procedures for country visits.
For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1007 Ext: 810)