مركز النديم لتأهيل ضحايا العنف والتعذيب

Update: Yucef released on the 29th of November 2010.

Update: Prosecution extends Yucef's detention 15 more days.

Journalist and activist Yucef Shabaan was supposed to present today in front of the magistrate of appeal to decide upon his release or extension of his administrative detention. On Friday the 19^th of November 2010 the Raml prosecution in Alexandria had ordered the detention of Shabaan for 4 days.. By law this decision should have expired today at 2.30 p.m. and Shabaan should have been released. But Yucef did not show up. Nobody saw him since his arrest on Friday while he was covering events in the area of Abu Soliman in Alexandria for the electronic El Badil newspaper where he works as a journalist.

Yucef was kidnapped from the street last Friday by officer Khaled Shalabi, chief of intelligence in Alexandria, who had previously threatened to “settle accounts” with Yucef during the latter’s participation in the Khaled Said protests. Upon his arrest, with other activists, Yucef was blindfolded, handcuffed and pushed into a microbus where he was brutally beaten by the officer himself and his assistants. The chief of intelligence pulled him by his hair and pushed his head out of the car window threatening that “Yucef will not be able to write again”.

The car initially took Yucef and the others to El Montaza police station. From there the rest of the detainees were then taken to El Raml police station where they were kept until they were thrown along the ring road, barefoot, with no IDs money or mobile phones. Yucef however was not with them. Since that day nobody has seen him.

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 ordered me to put them on again.. they handcuffed me again and tightened the blindfold than said from no you are number 2.. forget your name.. they gave me the instructions to follow while I am there.. then they called one of the soldiers and told him get him two blankets and chose them full of fleas and lice.. they brought them.. they also allocated my space.. an area 1.5 m x 60 cm.. where I would put my blanket and sleep while still handcuffed and blindfolded day and night.. I was not interrogated for 7 days.. we were handled by the sergeants.. slapping, kicking, beating with the shoe on our face and we were made to stand for prolonged periods of time that could last 40 continuous hours.. we would hear the numbers being called out.. from 1- 89.. we would hear the screams of the victims days and night.. then the interrogation began and with that the electric shocks.

(from Madinet Nasr file.. to be published)

3 July

1. A lieutenant aggresses El Shorouk correspondent, verbally abuses him and beats him while covering an accident. The officer was informed of the nature of the correspondent’s profession but continued his aggression. (El Shorouk newspaper)

4 July

Saturday’s events in Alexandria, Egypt are a worrying development consolidating the repressive approach adopted by the Ministry of Interior in dealing with peaceful protests. The Egyptian security used excessive force against peaceful protestors and youth activists who staged peaceful protests in Alexandria demanding the Ministry of Interior to end torture and other abuses and stop covering up for criminals and using false witnesses to enforce impunity.

Security forces physically assaulted a number of activists, among them Mohammed Tarek, who was beaten and dragged to a police truck where he was blindfolded and threatened with electroshocks. His personal belongings were confiscated and ultimately he was thrown on a deserted stretch of a highway. Some 30 activists were also arrested. They were beaten and stripped of their clothes in a degrading manner. After being held for nearly 12 hours, they were left barefooted and stranded in various unknown areas without their money, phones, and identification documents.

This assault on activists coincides with the trial of the two policemen who tortured and killed Khaled Said on 7 June 2010 at the entrance of a building next to an Internet cafe that Said frequented.

Twenty activists were violently arrested today from the Alexandria appeals court. According to our lawyer, they are currently held in Mansheya police station however the police denies.

They were taken violently and beaten, one sustained injury to his leg and was taken to hospital. The activists were peacefully protesting outside the court during the appeal of the trial of the activist Hassan Mostafa.

Hassan Mostafa received a 6 months jail sentence for fabricated charges of attacking a police officer. Hassan was one of the first activists who responded to the Khaled Said case and protested in front of the Sidi Gaber police station on the night of 11 June 2010 which was met with violence and arrests.

Like thousands of Egyptian young people Ahmed Doma, poet, blogger and media officer of the committee of prisoners of conscience dreamt of a life free of an emergency law, and security persecution of activists. On the 3^rd of May 2010 Doma responded with other young people to a call by several MPs and representatives of Egyptian political groups to participate in a demonstration from the Omar Makram mosque in down town Tahrir square to the People's Assembly to submit a petition concerning democratic change, drafted by a wide spectrum of political groups and trends.

As usual, the Egyptian ministry of interior responded in the one way it has adopted as a policy towards Egyptian citizens: violence, beating and cordoning the protesters. From the midst of that demonstration, which was violently prevented by the police from moving one step towards its planned destination, Doma was arrested, falsely accused of having alone aggressed two police officers, blocking the traffic and inciting the public!!! He was hastily tried, sentenced to six months in prison, which upon appeal, were reduced to three!

Although the arrest was clearly at a political event, the demonstration called for by MPs, and despite the numerous aggressions by the police against protesters, as documented in several legal complaints and blogs, including Doma himself, and despite a legal complaint filed by Doma against the two officers accusing them of aggressing him (case scheduled for the 2^nd of October 2010), Doma is currently doing his sentence at the high security criminal prison of Qatta, in a message sent by the police to Egyptian youth who dream of life of freedom.

1. 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 ballots for the NDP candidates in Abu Kabir.  Freedom for Amr Salama” (from Facebook).
2. From a letter: “Dear Residents of al-Fint village, al-Fishan Center in the Beni Suef governorate. Allow me to introduce myself: I have received advanced degrees, having completed a degree in philosophy and a master's degree from the Faculty of Literature at Cairo University.  Nevertheless, I am an Egyptian with little future, and am threatened by injustice, lies and slander.  On May 31, 2010, I was on a microbus in my village, al-Fint, heading toward al-Fishan to spend the night with one of my relatives.  Ramy Atef, an officer with the al-Fint police department, blocked my path.  He tried to take me from the microbus, and when I asked him why, he said, “get down,” and shoved me down on the back seat.  Then he threw me off the microbus and beat me with both his hands and feet, cursing and screaming insults.  He had   several officers from the al-Fint police department with him.  They took 1500 pounds from me, my ID, and two mobile phones.  He warned: “I took nothing from you,” then handcuffed me and took me to al-Fashin, where he beat me, cursed me and tortured me in every way possible.