CAIRO: Head of the Military Judiciary ordered an immediate probe early Wednesday into the contents of a YouTube video showing military and civilian police officers torturing two civilians.
As the video circulated widely over popular social network sites Facebook and Twitter, many netizens called for a rally Friday to protest police torture.
The video was posted by lawyers from the Hesham Mubarak Law Center who said that they plan to file a case to the Prosecutor General Thursday morning even though the military judiciary has announced that it will investigate the case.
“We received a video of torture at the Kordy Police station in Mansoura and we will file a complaint at the Prosecutor General’s office who is responsible for civilian cases,” lawyer Malek Adly told Daily News Egypt.
In the video, security personnel laugh as they take turns slapping the two detainees on the neck and electrocute them with a taser on the ears and chest as the senior officer questions them on the source of the weapons they were carrying.
Major General Adel El-Morsi, head of the military judiciary, was quoted by state run Al-Ahram newspaper as saying that the officers will be questioned about the context of what was recorded in the video.
According to Al-Ahram, El-Morsi considers the circulation of the video equivalent to an official complaint about the incident, based on which he has referred all those who appear in it for investigations.
According to state news agency MENA, the detainees were being accused of involvement in illegal weapons trade. The officers were attempting to extract information from them on their collaborators.
Adly explains that as a group of lawyers they are against the military trials of civilians.
“We don’t trust them and we believe that all their messages aim to allay people’s frustrations … but the video is sufficient proof to condemn their actions and put them under immediate investigation,” said Adly.
Adly explained that torture charges can be pressed anytime and that not knowing when exactly the torture took place should not influence the decision to investigate the issue.
