Attorney-General Hisham Barakat opened an urgent investigation into a report submitted by the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) that includes allegations of torture reported by prisoners, judicial sources told Al-Masry al-Youm Wednesday.
The move comes less than a week after a delegation from the NCHR visited Abu Zaabal prison in the northeast of Cairo and met with four prisoners who said they had been “subjected to beatings, assaults, humiliation and torture,” according to a statement issued by the NCHR’s media office Thursday.
Following the visit, the delegation submitted to Barakat Tuesday a detailed report on the cases and called on him to take legal procedures to ensure the implementation of all relevant procedures and regulations governing the detention and remand.
NCHR’s report stated that the prisoners said they were “extremely afraid” due to having been threatened by the prison administration not to talk about their experiences; the delegation noticed evidence of beatings on the prisoners’ bodies, and said that most of them had been held in disciplinary rooms for periods from a week to 16 days, in “inhumane conditions.”
Most of the jailed are students pending investigations, and their lengthy detentions may jeopardize their academic careers, the NCHR
