Diaries of Torture

Excerpts from the testimony of a survivor held in Madinet Nasr SSI headquarters: They handcuffed me for 60 continuous days, even when I was asleep.. they locked me up in a cell, about 30 meters underground.. the officer told me: nobody knows you are here except the minister of interior.. as soon as I entered the place I was met by a reception of abuse that would shame anybody to hear.. they swore at my mother and myself with the most obscene words.. they accused me of several things,, stripped me of my clothes and then…

1 June 2010 Blogger Amr Salama, author of the blog “Lessa Aish,” was arrested because of his coverage of electoral developments.  His last posts to Facebook before his arrest were the following: “After the National Democratic Party canceled elections in Sharqeya's Haheya district, in blatant disregard of court orders, I went to the Abu Kabir and Faqous districts – the most contested in Sharqeya.  I took photographs from inside polling staff headquarters, where they sat eating kofta and kebab and forging votes on election…

1 May General Ismail El Shaer, first assistant to the Minister of Interior, sends a warning to independent MPs refusing their request to organize a peaceful demonstration demanding political reform. The demonstration was planned to head to parliament to submit the demands to the chair. In its refusal, the Cairo security directorate states that within the current security situation such demonstrations and protests may lead to disruption of public security in the capital and obstruct traffic to the disadvantage of citizens…

“Police treatment of citizens in Egypt is some of the best in the world.  It is a far cry from what is circulated in some of the media outlets, which merely want to incite confusion on the Egyptian street.”      -- Dr. Nadia Makram Ebeid Former Minister of Environmental affairs and member of the “Police and the Egyptian People” Association 1 April Human Rights Watch said that Egyptian border guards fired on and killed three refugees as they tried to cross the border into Israel over the course of the four preceding days,…

This month the Association for Freedom and Expression observed an escalation in violence by security personnel and of arrest campaigns against Egyptian university students and their families. During the period of February 24th - April 15th 2010, the Association observed a massive number of student arrests, resulting in the incarceration of approximately 70 students.  Some of these students were kept in detention for a period of four days; others had their incarceration renewed for a period of fifteen days after the initial…