Tag: torture

‘I felt like I had died’

Posted on By 3arabawy

Muhammad Maree speaks to Sarah Carr about his ordeal:

Muhammad Salah Marei is a 23-year-old student in his fourth year of veterinary science at Mansoura University who doesn’t really want to be a vet.
“I wanted to study political science, but my father was determined that there should be at least one person in the family able to call himself doctor.”
Marei will be repeating the last university year in the coming academic year: In June, when he should have been taking his exams, he was being held in political detention in Alexandria’s Borg El-Arab Prison.
His crime was working as an interpreter for American journalist James Buck in Mahalla last April.
On April 6 and 7, violent clashes broke out between demonstrators protesting increasing food prices and security bodies, who rights groups accuse of using heavy-handed policing methods.
Hundreds of people were arrested over the course of the two days and held in Mahalla’s police stations.
Relatives of the detainees had gathered in the square in front of the First Mahalla Police Station to enquire about their missing loved ones on Thursday April 10. Buck was photographing and interviewing them, with Marei’s help.
“I was on one side of the square interviewing people and James was on the other taking photos and recording what people were saying,” Marei told Daily News Egypt.
“Suddenly I saw James run and people trying to protect him from [state security officers]. I stopped a taxi and told James to get in and told the driver, ‘go, go!’”
They were pursued by the state security officers, who eventually cut off the taxi.
“I was so calm, James was so frightened and angry. I told him ‘don’t worry, we didn’t do anything wrong, we’ll go in and get out right away.’ I really did believe that this would happen.
“The officers told the taxi driver to go to the police station. One of the officers sat beside us on the way there.”
In his tireless campaigning for his release, Buck has frequently paid tribute to Marei’s strength and equanimity during the ordeal.
“[Marei] is a kind man with a quiet, gentle voice who held my hand as we ran through the streets under police siege. When we got hit with tear gas, Muhammad negotiated safe houses for us to go in and wash our eyes. …When a passing train a few feet away was hit with rocks and I cowered in fear, he covered my body with his,” Buck wrote in an op-ed published in the Harvard Crimson in June.
Marei and Buck were held inside the First Mahalla Police Station where they were searched and interrogated before being charged.
“They made a report saying that we’re against the government and that we encouraged the people in Mahalla to destroy things, and other charges,” said Marei.
A district attorney in the Mahalla public prosecution office threw out the charges — “when he read the report he called another prosecutor and they laughed” Marei said — and the two men were released.
“When we approached the main door of the building there were a lot of people from state security waiting for us.
“They said ‘James can go but we need you, Muhammad, we need to finish the release procedures.’
“We tried to escape, to go back inside, but they took us back to the police station.”
Nine hours after they were originally arrested the pair were again detained at 3 am — illegally, in violation of the public prosecution office’s release order.
During his detention, Buck managed to notify his network of contacts of his arrest using the Twitter messaging service, and a lawyer sent by his university arrived at 9 am the next day.
He told Buck he could take him, but not Marei. Buck refused to leave without Marei and stayed with him until the two were separated and Buck was released in the early evening.
Unknown to Buck — and to anyone — Marei was taken from the police station to the Mahalla State Security office, where his nightmare began.
“Just as I went in through the door someone behind me lifted me by my belt very hard. He then blindfolded me, and tied my hands behind my back, took my wallet and my mobile and insulted me repeatedly.
“They took me to the second floor of the building and this time I was very afraid. They told me to sit on the ground. I heard a lot of people screaming, they were being electrocuted — I could hear the sound of the machine,
“A voice near my ear said ‘put him in the oven’ and after that sit him on the pole [a reference to sodomy]. I felt like I had died. Someone kicked me while I was on the ground.
“I spent an hour in the room before they took me to an officer. I could hardly walk because I was so scared.
“Before I went in [his office] voices said ‘there is electricity on the ground, jump you son of a…or you’ll be electrocuted.’ I jumped, but there was nothing.
“They insulted me again, ‘You traitor, you work with foreigners… You’re going to die from electric shocks.’”
Marei was interrogated about his political views, which television programs he watches, and about his relationship with Buck.
He was also questioned about all the contacts stored in his mobile phone and forced to repeat the same answers again, after 40 hours without sleep.
“I was taken back outside and started coughing and couldn’t breathe.
“I took off my blindfold and someone kicked my leg. Then he handcuffed my hand really tight, so tight that I lost feeling in it. They took me to a cell downstairs.
“I begged him to loosen the handcuff slightly, and he did. There was no blanket. I was on my own. The floor was rough and I was still handcuffed behind my back. I couldn’t sleep.”
Marei says that he was kept in solitary confinement, blindfolded and handcuffed, for 19 days, permitted to use a toilet once a day for three minutes.
With obvious embarrassment, whispering, and barely able to form the words, he told Daily News Egypt that guards burst into his cell one night while he was asleep. He was so frightened that he urinated involuntarily. He was not given a change of clothes.
During this time his family — who had gone to the state security office in search of their missing son — were told that he was not being held there.
“They told me that ‘you’re going to die here and we’ll bury you in this cell’. I believed them.”

Prison riots in Syria

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received the following message from Syria:

A live Massacre unfolds in the Saydnaya prison in Syria
The regime denies, and the world is silent

UPDATE ONE:
The event was reportedly instigated on July 4th, by the attitude of the prison guards, who during an unannounced search of prison cells, where Islamist prisoners are held, desecrated copies of the Qur’an. This led to a shoving match that soon developed into a full-scale riot when guards opened fire on prisoners and killed nine of them. Rather than getting cowed, the prisoners were up in arms about this, and the in the ensuing melee, more prisoners were killed, bringing the total to 25, but the prisoners got the upper-hand taking the warden of the prisoner and 8 of his top officers as hostages. This led to the surrender of many of the guards, bringing the total number of hostages to 300-400.
(The total number of prisoners in Saydnaya prison is variedly estimated at 3000-5000, most of which are political prisoners of various backgrounds, including Islamist of various trends, communists, liberals and Kurdish activists).
The remaining “free” officers used tear gas and drove the prisoners and their hostages to the roof of the prison, where one of some prisoners used cellular phones confiscated from the guards to get in touch with their human rights activists, news agencies and their parents. This is how we continue to get our information at this stage, albeit direct contact with the prisoners came to a halt at 3 pm on July 5th when the authorities shut down the local cellular service. After that, the main source of information became the parents and bystanders who traveled back forth between the prison site and the Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus where the dead and wounded are being taken.
Before the interruption of direct communications, the prisoners managed to provide the details above in addition to the following points:
1) Prisoners have up until that point refrained from sing any of the confiscated weapons as a gesture of good will.
2) They have appointed one of their ranks to negotiate with the authorities, Yassir Bahr.
3) Their only demand was they will not be killed as a result of this development.
4) The authorities refused to make any promises and said that first, the prisoners should surrender, before discussions could take place, and threatened to storm the prison even if this lead to a 1,000 deaths.
5) When the prisoners refused to surrender, the authorities beat and arrested the main negotiator, Yasser.
6) By 3 pm, more than 30 tanks were surrounding the prison, as we as a number of armored divisions.
7) Rumors that the prison was bombed from the air spread among the local population, but they are known to be false, at least this was the case up until 3 pm.
8 ) Parents of inmates are gathered at a safe distance from prison.
This is where the situation stood at 3:00 pm, July 5th.
The Associated Press, BBC, Human Rights Watch, Al-Jazeerah, Al-Arabiyah and the Lebanese station New TV picked up on the event (in fact both the BBC and New TV spoke directly to one of the inmates who using a confiscated cell phone), the German government expressed concerns, and on the morning of July 6th, the Syrian Arab News Agency downplayed the event, describing as it as a riot instigated by imprisoned terrorist groups, and claiming that the situation was now under control.
It is not, as the next update will show.

UPDATE TWO:
* As of the morning of July 6, the prisoners are still holding their grounds on the roof of the prison, while government troops seem to be trying to shoot their way in.
* As a sign of good will, the prisoners have reportedly abandoned most confiscated weapons.
* Prisoners still hold many hostages including the warden and his top officers.
* More reinforcements were sent to the prison on the morn of July 6th.
* Ambulances continue to go back and forth between the prison and Tishreen hospital.
* Parents who went to Tishreen hospital were denied access. A crowd of over 200 parents is now surrounding the hospital. A scuffle with the authorities took place in the evening, security officers reportedly used force wounding many, blood can be seen on the ground in many locations around the entrance of the hospital.
* Mothers of the inmates who came to the prison site offered to negotiate with their sons and talk them into surrendering themselves, the authorities refused. As a result mothers tried to block access to the prison by camping on the road, security officers intervened, leading to a number of wounded.
The situation continues to unfold, despite official denials. Observers confirm this. The death toll will likely rise to several hundreds after all is done.

TE engineers go on strike demanding better pay; Lawyers demonstrate against police torture

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

Telecom Egypt’s transmission engineers reportedly went on strike in several governorates on Sunday, objecting to the discrepancies in salaries between engineers within the company, press reports said on Monday.
According to Al-Masry Al-Youm daily newspaper, engineers sent an internal email calling for a strike, which brought work to a halt at the Ramses, Tanta, Alexandria, Suez and Sharqeya call centers.
“We are tired of false promises given by management that our salaries and bonuses will increase,” the email said.
They claimed that their salaries were only LE 1,000, when other engineers got paid up to LE 15,000.
The engineers on strike did not call for pay raises to match the salaries of employees in private telecom companies, instead saying “we want to at least get paid as much as the engineers in the [company’s] IT department.”
Sources inside the government-owned company told Daily News Egypt that IT engineers are under a bonus system, which the striking transmission engineers are excluded from.
“Transmission engineers usually receive an average salary of $3,000 in other companies in Egypt,” the source, who preferred to remain anonymous, said. In Telecom Egypt, those engineers earn LE 1,500-2,000 a month, if not less, the source added.
However, the source continued, the IT engineers are not that much better off. The big bonuses usually go to top management, while most of the engineers get “minimal and unstable” bonuses, the source said.
According to the striking employees, more than 20 employees from the Ramses call center left their jobs last month after feeling “discriminated against.”
The email called on all engineers to participate in the strike, until Minister of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) Tarek Kamel interferes to solve the “injustice.”
The MCIT refused to comment on the strike, saying they had not received information that there were any strikes at Telecom Egypt.

In other news, the HMLC blog is reporting that 300 lawyers are staging a protest in front of Hadayeq el-Qobba Police Station, after a lawyer by the name Magdi Ibrahim Taha was assaulted by the police and tortured in custody. By the way, this police station building also hosts the notorious Hadayeq el-Qobba State Security office.