Jailed activist tortured to death: Egypt's pro-Morsi bloc

The main support bloc of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Monday accused the Egyptian authorities of torturing one of its members to death in prison.

In a statement, the pro-Morsi National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy said that member Emad Hassan, 49, had died in prison after being tortured by National Security agents in central Egypt’s Beni Sueif province.

“Hassan was mercilessly tortured for 12 hours until he died,” the bloc asserted.

The Beni Sueif Security Directorate, for its part, had earlier said that Hassan had died shortly after being detained on charges of being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, which the authorities designated a “terrorist” organization in late 2013.

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The Security Directorate alleged in a statement that Hassan had fallen ill while under interrogation and had subsequently died at hospital.

The Egyptian authorities have waged a harsh crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since the 2013 ouster of Morsi – Egypt’s first freely elected president and a Brotherhood leader – by the army.

Over the course of the last two and a half years, security forces have killed hundreds – and detained tens of thousands – of Brotherhood members and Morsi supporters.

According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, 95 detainees died in Egyptian prisons last year alone.

The London-based Human Rights Monitor, for its part, said that 79 civilians had been killed in Egypt in August alone in extrajudicial killings carried out by Egyptian security forces.