WASHINGTON: The U.S. State Department on Thursday said it was deeply concerned about the arrest and alleged torture of two civil society activists in Egypt and urged authorities there to investigate the matter. We are troubled by the recent reports that Mohammed Al-Sharqawy as well as Karim Al-Shaer were arrested and, during their arrest and detention, were tortured in custody and then denied independent medical treatment, Tom Casey, the State Department s acting spokesman, told reporters. If those allegations are true, that would certainly be a violation of Egypt s own laws as well as accepted international human rights standards and practices, he added. Casey said the U.S. embassy in Cairo had raised the issue with Egyptian authorities and had urged them to provide medical care to the two activists. Certainly, if the allegations are true, what we want to see happen is that the Egyptian government should take immediate steps to punish those who are responsible and put into place institutional measures to prevent those kinds of incidents from occurring, he said. Egypt s interior ministry on Wednesday denied claims that Al-Sharqawy and Al-Shaer had been tortured and said their treatment in prison was within the limits of the law. The two activists were arrested following a rally in Cairo in support of reformist judges on May 25. In a letter smuggled out of his prison cell, Al-Sharqawy said he suffered abuse including being sodomized by police with a rolled-up piece of cardboard. On Wednesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling for an inquiry into the alleged abuses. President Hosni Mubarak should immediately order an independent judicial investigation into last Thursday s severe beatings by security agents of political activists Karim Al-Shaer and Mohammed Al-Sharqawy, it said. AFP
Washington denounces arrests of activists in Egypt
