Egyptian children - so young yet locked-up as 'terrorists'

Very young children have been put in prison in Egypt; their rights granted by international conventions have been lost since the coup last year. You can see the marks of torture on their bodies, while the mental scars are embedded deep in their psyche, like the books they used to read about freedom and a positive future.

Kareem’s story is told by his mother from Alzohoor Prosecution Centre in Port Said governorate; she was there to attend the 14 year-old’s hearing: “At exactly two and a half hours after midnight, a huge force of masked policemen attacked the house and destroyed all our belongings,” she told Alarabi Aljadid. “I was surprised to see that they were asking about my child, Kareem, and they interrogated him for an entire hour at the house regarding events and demonstrations with which he had no link. He said that he had no information about such things so they abducted him and took him to the police station.”

When she went to the police station later that night, Kareem’s mother saw torture marks on his body including, she claims, those inflicted by electric shocks. She cried when she recounted the details of her son’s treatment at the hands of the Egyptian authorities.

“I asked the prosecutor to let him go because the end of year exams were in two weeks. Kareem is taking part in an American University scholarship, and if he is absent he’ll be expelled, but the prosecutor did not care about any of that at all.”

Kareem was not the first member of his family to be abducted by the security forces; his father was arrested on September 15 last year in a similar operation. Kareem’s mother told the police, “You’ve arrested his father and tortured him, so what do you want from his 8th grade son now?”

In the city of Al-Mansoura, Abdulla, or “Boody” as the family likes to call him, is also 14 years-old. He was arrested in the street during an anti-coup demonstration. He is in the tenth grade and was heading for a 3pm tutorial on January 8th when he was detained by the police. His brother Dia’a was told by his classmates that he had been taken to the police station.

“When we went there,” said Dia’a, “we were surprised to find out that a statement was made and he was accused of a number of crimes that no one could believe a child could commit, such as burning a police car, the attempted murder of a security officer, inciting riots and terrorising pedestrians in the street.” The prosecutors decided to hold Abdulla for a minimum of 15 days.

Dia’a is surprised at the state of the Egyptian judiciary system. “My brother’s detention order was renewed twice, for another 15 days each time, but what hurts us the most are the torture marks on his body.” He has called on human rights organisations, especially those concerned with children’s rights, to intervene for his brother’s release along with 5 other children arrested at the same time; one of them is younger than Abdulla and they are all being held in Dkrans public prison in Al-Dhaklia. “The final exams are coming and we hope that everyone will help to save the future of these children who are imprisoned unjustly in violation of all norms and constitutional rights.”

Mostafa Jamal Ahmad, an eleventh grade student at Al-Huda Al-Nour Secondary School in Al-Mansoura, is 15 years-old. His mother says that he was arrested when he was going to a tutorial on the 20th January; a group of “thugs” kidnapped and assaulted him and injured his head seriously before handing him over to the police. Officers were trying to prevent anti-coup demonstrations on that day.

Mostafa was taken to Al-Mansoura police station; he was given no treatment for the wound to his head. Instead, the police officers, it is alleged by his mother, “assaulted him with a huge wooden stick before putting him in a detention cell in the station”.

After checking the police report which was used to detain Mostafa for more than three months, we found that he was accused of taking part in a demonstration and owning a t-shirt that had the words “Ultras Nahdawi” on it.

Mostafa’s mother speaks with great sadness about the miserable conditions where her son is being kept: ”He is in a room of about 5 square metres along with 34 other children. The room is dark and there is no natural light. Many of the children have developed infectious skin ailments which spread amongst them.”

She is distraught that while her son is locked up many symbols of corruption from the Hosni Mubarak era are released from prison. “The future of my son and the other children is so uncertain now,” she complains. “They are not guilty of any crime but are being held in prison even though exam time is fast-approaching.” She added that they have asked the public prosecutor to let the children take their exams so that they won’t lose the whole academic year but they have virtually given up on any hope that they will be released in time for the end-of-year tests.

Mohamed Walid’s family home is in Al-Giza governorate, around several kilometres from the capital, Cairo; he is a freshman at commerce college, just 17 years-old. He was arrested while he was returning from a demonstration against the military coup on 8th January at the seven buildings area in Heliopolis as he was getting on a bus. At the police station he too was assaulted by officers before he was charged with belonging to a “terrorist group” and robbery. According to his father, Walid Abu Alsuud, he was unable to take two exams in his first semester because of his arrest. His son, he insists, is innocent of the charges against him.

An association of the families of detainees in Port Said governorate issued a statement recently condemning the actions of the police officers, headed by Chief of Police at Alzohoor police station, Mohamed Suliman. The accusations against Suliman include the abduction of three students from a minibus in front of a local mosque. Mohamed Almasri, Mohamed Abdo Garbo’a and Ma’ath Hesham Algayar, said the association, were all assaulted repeatedly inside the police station, which is a centre for national security officials in the area. There, it is claimed, “the most brutal forms of torture” were used against them, including electric shocks for 16 hours. At least 40 children aged 16 or under have been tortured in the station.

The director of the Egyptian centre for Human Rights, Hani Helal, listed the crimes against children in Egypt, all of which are illegal. This, he claims, is because the prosecutors have a long list of charges which they apply, regardless of the age of the detainee and without any proper investigation. “The law is clear in that it prohibits criminal charges against children younger than 15,” insisted Helal, “and yet there are hundreds of children within this age group who have a list of felony charges against them.”

The general prosecution is doing “unbelievable” things, he pointed it. “Even when a child is innocent and being released, the prosecution moves quickly to appeal and stop the release taking place. This is never done with hardened criminals, never mind children.” Some children are released on bail, he added, but there is no provision for bail conditions for children, so such moves are against the law.

“The only place in Egypt which is equipped to receive children is the juvenile detention centre in Almarg area in Cairo,”said Helal. “The disaster is that the capacity of this institute is 70 inmates but it now has 1,225 children crammed in there, so the Ministry of the Interior is holding some of the children alongside adult criminals, which is also a violation of the law.” The human rights worker noted that the Cairo governorate alone has 500 children detained for political reasons.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.