CAIRO: A Cairo court on Tuesday acquitted a state security officer of charges of torturing to death a man he had arrested in 2003, a judicial source said.
The court must publish within 45 days its reason for acquitting Captain Ashraf Safwat whose alleged involvement in the killing came to light earlier this year through Egypt’s activist Internet blogger community.
Back on Sept. 16, 2003, Safwat summoned Mohammed Abdel Qader and his brother to a Cairo police station. Abdel Qader died five days later and an autopsy said torture by electric shock combined with a weak heart was the cause of death.
In January, Abdel Qader’s case appeared on a blog, featuring excerpts from the forensic report and gruesome autopsy pictures.
“There is evidence of the application of high temperature to the right and left breast and the penis resembling the effects of electrocution with an electric wire, read an excerpt. “He was subject to those injuries hours before his death.
It took seven months for Safwat to answer the subpoena in the case, and when he did it was with his own autopsy report claiming the burns came from a defibrillator used to revive the victim after a heart attack.
