(AFP PHOTO / MOHAMED ABDELWAHAB)
A tally of 41,163 Egyptians have been arrested from 3 July 2013 to 15 May 2014 over political, terrorist, sectarian strife, protesting and military charges, according to a count the independent online group called Wiki Thawra released on Saturday.
The figures show that the day with the highest number of arrests was the dispersal of the sit-ins supporting former president Mohamed Morsi on 14 August 2013 where 2,076 were arrested, the majority of which from Minya governorate in Upper Egypt.
The day of the Ramses clashes, 16 August, comes second, with 2,240 arrests and the third anniversary of the 25 January Revolution comes third with 1,491 arrested.
Cairo tops the number of arrests, with 24% of the total, while circumstances of arrests are led by protest dispersals (39%) and followed by raids by security forces (24%) and arrest warrants (13%).
The total number of documented cases of military trials for civilians reached 874 during the 11-months period, 786 of which were reported from the governorate of Marsa Matruh located on the North Western border between Egypt and Libya.
Wiki Thawra, established by a group of independent youth, refers to itself as the “statistical database of the Egyptian revolution”. The open source group aggregates what it calls “the memory” of the revolution. Its data mainly depends on reports by independent civil society organisations including the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre (HMLC), and the Front to Defend Egypt’s Protesters (FDEP).
On Saturday, statements were released by Amnesty International, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Violence and Torture calling for an end of the disappearances and torture that are taking place in a military prison inside the headquarters of the Second Field Army Command.
The NGOs compiled first hand testimonies of a group of detainees who were held in Al-Azouly prison. The presence of this prison and undocumented cases of prisoners, and the lack of observation from human rights organisations, suggest that the number of prisoners held might be more than the documented cases by Wiki Thawra.
