CAIRO: Egyptian bloggers, long at the forefront of exposing rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, local media reported on Tuesday.
The parallel festival is the brainchild of a blogger named Walid, the Egyptian Mail reported, and will feature controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.
Prizes, including a Golden Whip, will be awarded to the best entrants.
Egypt s blogosphere has exposed numerous incidents of police torture, including that of minibus driver Emad El-Kabir who was shown being sodomized with a stick in widely distributed video footage shot on a police mobile phone.
Two policemen were jailed for three years earlier this month for that crime in a rare case of security forces members being sentenced for abusing detainees.
Rights groups say the use of torture is widespread in Egyptian jails and police stations, while the interior ministry says that those who carry out torture are always punished.
The Cairo Film Festival runs from Nov. 27 to Dec. 7.
