Tag: torture

Witnesses detail a police reign of terror last month, Jano Charbel reports for Al-Masry Al-Youm…

Residents of Cairo’s Warraq district are up in arms over what they claim is a massive pattern of “thuggery and injustice” by the local police station, including illegal mass round-ups, torture and openly framing suspects.
Protesters are planning a Thursday morning demonstration outside the judicial complex in Northern Giza. Inside the building, a hearing will decide the immediate fate of Warraq resident Ibrahim Muhammad, who faces drug and weapons possession charges his supporters say are the invention of a brutal rogue officer.
The residents are naming names, citing one specific officer–First Lieutenant Magdy Awad—at the center of most of the abuses.
The charges center around a mass police sweep of Warraq on July 26, looking for a man named Sayyed Abu Zeid who had been involved in a local brawl the day before. According to witnesses, police stormed three apartments and detained eight people for questioning—including Abu Zeid’s mother, brother and several neighbors. Ibrahim Muhammad, 27, was one of the neighbors.
Abu Zeid later turned himself in, and all of the detainees were released, except Muhammad, who was charged with possession of a herion and a machete.
Another detainee, Essam Mustafa, was released on charges of machete-possession and faces a November 10 judicial hearing.
“I swear I had no such weapon with me, all the witnesses can testify to this. It was Officer Awad who framed me; he produced an arm-long knife and said it was mine,” Mustafa told Al Masry Al Youm. “Officer Awad resorts to thuggery and injustice, while we are resorting to the law and justice.”
Repeated attempts to contact the Warraq police station for comment on these charges were unsuccessful.
Defense Lawyer Haitham Mohamadain, of the independent Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, said Muhammad was attacked and beaten in the street by officer Awad after he objected to the arrest of an elderly woman. In the police station, Mohamadain said Muhammad was repeatedly slapped, leaving his face bloody and bruised.
“We made sure that his injuries were inspected by the medical forensics unit, and they have filed a detailed report to the Warraq Prosecution regarding this physical abuse,” he said. “We have filed four charges against Officer Awad including the crimes of forcefully storming three different apartments and breaking down their doors without search warrants; detaining civilians without arrest warrants; physical abuse and torture of five civilians; the leveling of falsified charges against defendant Ibrahim Muhammad Ibrahim; and the obstruction of justice.”
Outside the judicial complex Ibrahim’s distraught mother, Reda Hamza, said, “My son is surely not a drug pusher or a heroin dealer, he doesn’t even smoke cigarettes.”