Amnesty: Hundreds suffer torture, forced disappearances in Egypt

Amnesty International has condemned the Egyptian national security agency’s practices against civilians saying it has abducted, tortured and enforced the disappearance of hundreds of people in an effort to intimidate opponents and wipe out peaceful dissent.

In a report issued yesterday and titled “Egypt: ‘Officially, you do not exist’: Disappeared and tortured in the name of counter-terrorism”, Amnesty said hundreds of students, political activists and protesters, including children as young as 14 have vanished without a trace at the hands of the state.

“On average three to four people per day are seized according to local NGOs, usually when heavily armed security forces led by NSA officers storm their homes. Many are held for months at a time and often kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire period,” it said.

The report quoted Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, as saying: “This report reveals the shocking and ruthless tactics that the Egyptian authorities are prepared to employ in their efforts to terrify protesters and dissidents into silence.”

“Enforced disappearance has become a key instrument of state policy in Egypt. Anyone who dares to speak out is at risk, with counter-terrorism being used as an excuse to abduct, interrogate and torture people who challenge the authorities.”

The report features the detailed cases of 17 people subjected to enforced disappearance, who were held incommunicado for periods ranging between several days to seven months, cut off from the outside world and denied access to their lawyers or families or any independent judicial oversight.

The report also includes harrowing accounts of torture of victims during interrogation sessions lasting up to seven hours, in order to extract “confessions” later used as evidence against them during questioning by prosecutors and to obtain convictions at trials. In some cases, those tortured were children.

One of the most shocking cases examples is that of Mazen Mohamed Abdallah, who was subjected to enforced disappearance at the age of 14 in September 2015 and suffered horrendous abuse including being repeatedly raped with a wooden stick in order to extract a false “confession”.