Rights group calls for Egypt to investigate alleged torture case

Tue, 16 Nov 2010

Cairo - Amnesty International Tuesday called for an independent investigation into the case of a 19-year-old boy who, according to his family, was found dead in a canal with signs of abuse after police detention.

Egyptian security sources told the German Press Agency dpa that the death was being investigated under normal procedures.

The security sources said that Ahmed Shaaban's family has not yet submitted a claim to the attorney general's office to investigate the case further.

Shaaban's family learnt earlier this month that he was arrested at a police check point on his way back from a wedding in the northern coastal city of Alexandria and taken to Sidi Gaber police station together with his friend, Ahmed Farrag Labib, who is still in police custody without access to family or a lawyer, according to Amnesty International.

Shabban's family said that police initially told them he was not detained at Sidi Gaber, admitting only to detaining Labib in relation to the theft of a mobile phone.

But the family said that, shortly after, they received an anonymous phone call informing them that their son was in detention and being tortured at Sidi Gaber police station in Alexandria, according to Amnesty International.

The local newspaper Daily News Egypt reported that when his family went to the morgue to collect his body days later, they found his head smashed and his shoulders ripped apart after his body had been floating in the canal for nearly two days. The family also said that Shaaban's body had large bruises in the groin area, according to local reports.

Police said they are not investigating the matter as a possible police torture case.

"The police didn't allow us to take a picture of the body because they didn't want another Khaled Said case," Shaaban's aunt, 45-year- old Roqia Aboul Nour, was quoted in Daily News Egypt as saying.

That was a reference to a case involving two police officers who have been charged with beating the 28-year-old Said. Although he died, the officers have not been charged with murder.

Said's case sparked outrage and large demonstrations against what many people argue has been an attempted police cover-up by security forces after pictures of the boy's severely disfigured face appeared on a Facebook group that has over 294,000 members.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353826,investigate-alleged-torture-case.html.