From Reuters:
One of the highest courts in Egypt has overturned the acquittal of three police officers and an undercover detective who had been charged with torturing a man to death 13 years ago, court officials said on Sunday.
A criminal court had acquitted the four but the Court of Cassation ordered a retrial after an appeal from the public prosecution, the officials said, speaking on a customary condition of anonymity.
Prosecutors accused the men of torturing Abdallah Ibrahim to death while trying to extract a confession from him in a murder case.
The ruling is the latest in a series of high-profile cases where some Egyptian prosecutors and courts have taken a tougher line on police torture.
International and local rights groups say torture is systematic in Egyptian jails and police stations. Past victims have reported receiving electric shocks and beatings.
And in other developments, Reuters also reports:
Egyptian prosecutors on Saturday charged two policemen with murdering a man by throwing him off a balcony in Cairo, security sources said.
A security source gave the policemen’s names as Maher Hassan and Hassan Sobhi, and said prosecutors had accused them of killing Nasr Gadallah, 37 in August last year.
Forensic examination of Gadallah confirmed he had died of the impact, but offered no opinion as to whether he was pushed or jumped, as the two policemen say.
Gadallah’s case is one of a number of high profile cases of suspected police abuse that gained wide-spread attention after a video circulated on the Internet last year showing a man being sodomised with a stick in a Cairo police station.
Two policemen were later sentenced to three years in prison for torture in that case.
