Amnesty International Criticizes Egypt's Human Rights Record

[La_Serpiente]

Amnesty International Criticizes Egypt's Human Rights Record

Human Rights group Amnesty International released a statement Thursday criticizing the phenomenon of torture in Egyptian prisons. They claim that seven people died in Egypt last year as a result of systematic and widespread torture, although this contravenes with both international and domestic law. The group said that state security officials as well as normal police officers subject prisoners to various methods of torture such as electric shocks, beatings, whippings and others.

The statement read that "Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment continue to be practiced systematically in detention centers. While the Egyptian authorities have taken some positive steps in the field of human rights over the past year, the authorities have failed to introduce urgently-needed remedies to an endemic problem."

This scathing criticism comes after the Egyptian Peoples' Assembly had agreed on setting up a National Council for Human Rights last May after much wrangling between different factions. Many neutral observers had seen it as an attempt to absorb the opposition under a government-controlled umbrella and thus stifle the efforts of independent Human Rights groups. In lieu of this statement, the English version of the semi-official Al-Ahram Weekly ran a story about the death of a 43 year old accountant Mosaad Qotb, said to have died three days after having been kept in a State Security detention center due to his ties to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. According to the Weekly's report, thirty four people have died from torture-related deaths in the past three years.

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Amnesty International Criticizes Egypt's Human Rights Record

[Darranar]

1. Good for them...

Mubarak is a brutal tyrant, and US support for his regime proves that Bush's call for more democracy in the Middle East is worthless.