Infamous Egyptian torturer dies in Britain

The man responsible for torturing hundreds of people during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt has died in Britain. Shams Badran was 91, the New Khaliji has reported.

Badran was known widely for being responsible for the torture of Muslim Brotherhood members and leaders during the 1960s. Hundreds of his victims reported being tortured very badly either by him or under his direction.

As Minister of Defence, he was blamed by Nasser for Egypt’s defeat in the Six Day War with Israel. After the war, he was put on trial alongside with other officers and imprisoned. He was released from prison in 1974 and moved to Britain.

In 2012, Badran sent a message to the Muslim Brotherhood denying that he was responsible for the torture, but the movement’s leaders said that he was lying. “He tortured me himself,” said Rashad Bayoumi, the Deputy Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood. “When I told him to fear God, he said, ‘I’ll put God in the cell next to you if he comes down here.’”

Bayoumi explained that the torture varied between whipping, hanging, spraying with burning alcohol, filling the cells with water to the depth of a metre and a half and unleashing hungry dogs to bite prisoners. “I was sent to prison in 1954 and came out in 1965,” Bayoumi told the media in 2012. “Four days later, I was arrested and served another seven years until 1972.”

According to Talaat Al-Shenawy, Nasser ordered the arrests by phone from Moscow, even though “It was the Brotherhood that secured the entrances and exits of Cairo during his coup.” This was a reference to the alleged coup that Nasser used as a pretext to send Muslim Brotherhood officials to prison.

“Nasser’s bodyguard, Ismail Al-Fayoumy, was from the Brotherhood,” Al-Shenawy pointed out. “He would have killed him if had we ordered it, but we are peaceful people.

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