CAIRO: Egypt s chief prosecutor has ordered the exhumation of the body of a teenager who died in police custody amid family allegations he was tortured to death, local media reported on Friday.
A new autopsy will be carried out on 13-year-old Mamdouh Abdel Aziz, who died in hospital in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura on Sunday, four days after police took him there because he lost consciousness while in their custody on a theft charge.
His family immediately filed a complaint against police, claiming they tortured him to death.
The police report said he died of a lung complaint, and the interior ministry denied any torture, saying that burns on his body were accidental.
A legal source said on Sunday however that the boy had lost consciousness during his six days in police detention, apparently after being beaten.
Egyptian media and rights groups have made numerous allegations of police torture in recent weeks, and the chief prosecutor has ordered the arrest of four officers after the death of a detainee in a Nile Delta village at the end of July.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said earlier this month it had documented 567 cases of torture since 1993, including 167 deaths.
The report was based on individual testimonies, legal cases and medical and autopsy reports and included 26 cases of police torture recorded this year alone, which resulted in three deaths.
