Human Rights Watch (8/2): Egypt: Security Attack Opposition Demonstrators

[Jack Rabbit]

Press release from Human Rights Watch
Dateline Washington Tuesday August 2

Egypt: Security Forces Attack Opposition Demonstrators
Eyewitness Testimony of Plainclothes Police Beating Protestors

President Husni Mubarak should urgently appoint an independent commission to investigate those responsible for ordering and carrying out attacks against demonstrators protesting his decision to run for a fifth term, Human Rights Watch said today. The attacks, which took place on Saturday evening, July 30, were the second time in two months that police beat peaceful protestors.

Human Rights Watch said that because the police violence appeared to reflect a high-level policy decision, any investigation should include the role of Interior Minister Habib al-Adli.

"Police brutality against peaceful protestors is becoming the norm again in Egypt," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division. "What we saw in Cairo on Saturday night reflected a high-level decision not just to prevent a demonstration, but also to physically punish those daring to protest President Mubarak's candidacy."

Police initially detained some 40 persons, including George Ishaq and Amin Eskandar, leaders of the opposition umbrella group known as Kifaya ("Enough"), and took them to the Central Security camp in Darrassa, a Cairo neighborhood, which is not a legal place of detention under the authority of the public prosecutor. The authorities released Ishaq and Eskandar and a dozen others after several hours, but held 24 others overnight and transferred them the next day to Higher State Security Prosecution headquarters in Heliopolis for investigation on charges of participating in an illegal assembly, resisting and assaulting arrest officers, and "spreading tendentious propaganda that could damage the public interest."

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