CAIRO: The general prosecutor’s office found material evidence of torture at Al-Montaza police station, said Ahmed Sabry, writer in Al-Badil daily newspaper and eyewitness to the official investigation.
Sabry’s story ran on the front page of the first issue of Al-Badil daily newspaper that appeared on newsstands Monday.
He told The Daily Star Egypt that he saw swords, whips, different types of batons and knives, all to be used by the police station s officials for torture.
Sabry refutes any probability that those tools were seized by the police station and not bought by them, adding that the general prosecution is the one who filed the accusation against the police station after the investigations.
An investigating team found that 40 people had been kept in custody illegally at the Montaza police station, after receiving complaints from the families of those detained, a security source told AFP.
The prosecutor promptly ordered the release of the detainees, confiscated the torture equipment and launched an inquiry into the matter, calling the police officers in charge in for questioning, the source said.
Hafez Abu Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, told The Daily Star Egypt that the incident only proves that reports from human rights organizations about the presence of torture in Egypt s prisons and police stations are true and credible.
We have always asked the general prosecution to use its legal and constitutional right to inspect police stations, Abu Seada said, which [would] definitely lower the percentage of torture cases in Egypt.
According to Abu Seada, the intervention of the general prosecution is the best policy to deactivate these types of violations.
Hosam Bahgat, chairman of the Egyptian Initiative of Personal Rights, told The Daily Star Egypt that a joint statement from some of the human rights organizations and NGOs will come out soon about this incident. – Additional reporting by AFP.
