Dozens of civilians in western Luxor staged a demonstration on Friday protesting the alleged torture of a man in the Hurghada police station last week.
The man, named Sayed Abu Al-Waffa, was allegedly tortured in a police station in the Red Sea governorate. They claimed that the victim is a worker in the tourism sector, who was arrested while driving a motorcycle for not having a driver’s license.
The demonstrators claimed he had gotten into an argument with a low-ranking police officer and was taken to the police station and beaten after he refused to be searched. He is currently suffering from tetraplegia and fractures to the spinal cord.
The protesters demanded the interference of Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar to prosecute the accused officers.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior denied that “anyone was tortured and that the matter is being investigated”.
Torture has been a controversial subject in Egypt. Since the beginning of the year, reports of deaths in custody and incidents of torture have been on the rise. The El Nadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence released a report on cases of torture and abuse in Egyptian prisons and detention centres during August, citing that 76 civilians were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.
