Detainees seen in videos allegedly showing torture in a Cairo police station inflicted their injuries on themselves, according to Egyptian authorities, who have charged the prisoners with spreading “fake news”.
Up to 13 people detained in El-Salam First police station for unknown petty crimes made multiple videos that they say show the abuse they suffered at the hands of police officers and security forces.
The videos recorded last November, and obtained by the Guardian, appeared to show detainees hung in a stress position, with their hands fastened behind their backs. A second video appeared to show multiple detainees talking to the camera as they pointed to their injuries, including large bruises and head wounds.
After the footage was released online, Egypt’s public prosecution claimed that the detainees had “inflicted injuries on themselves”, using a coin. It added that authorities confiscated the mobile phones used to make the videos.
Amr Magdi, of Human Rights Watch, who reviewed the videos for the Guardian, said: “Based on what I saw in the videos, they seemed authentic. Yet the prosecutor describes the injuries they sustained as being inflicted by the detainees themselves using a coin, which is completely illogical and doesn’t really match the kind of beating marks and wounds seen in the videos.”
He said: “I find the prosecutors’ statement – disappointing doesn’t even cover it – I think the right word is a laughable attempt to cover up police abuses.”
Magdi also pointed to the prosecutor’s lack of any mention of a video that showed two detainees suspended in a stress position with their arms behind their backs, something that would be nearly impossible for any detainee to do to themselves.
According to a trial witness, the detainees appeared before Egypt’s supreme state security prosecution after the prosecutor’s statement, charged with belonging to a terrorist group, misusing the internet, spreading false information with the intent to undermine national security, and illegally receiving foreign funds.
They have since been held in pre-trial detention. Since the Covid pandemic, hearings can be held remotely through secure TV networks that connect the court and defendants. It has made it easier to hold detainees indefinitely.
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi lauded the government’s national strategy for human rights as “a milestone in Egypt’s history” when it was launched last year. The strategy declared that “human rights are being enhanced in police institutions” and that “all forms of torture constitute a crime”, with no statute of limitations.
Mohamed Lotfy, of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, a Cairo-based human rights group, said he believed the authorities cracked down hard on the detainees at El-Salam First police station to prevent other detainees from filming or broadcasting similar videos.
“I think the videos made so much noise and were distributed so widely … the idea was to really hit them hard in order to set an example,” he said. “Now if a video is leaked, even if detainees send it to their family members, those family members will be worried about publishing them, as they don’t want to make the situation worse.”
Aly Hussin Mahdy, an activist who broadcast the videos on his popular YouTube channel, said the Egyptian authorities’ reaction had a chilling effect in El-Salam, the area where the police station is located. “Their families can’t discuss or inquire about their sons or where they’re being held, because asking means they risk being detained or ‘disappeared’ by the Egyptian security services too,” he said.
