Originally published the first week of December two years ago:
(MER - 2 Dec 1996): EGYPT SINCE CAMP DAVID HAS BECOME MORE violent, more unstable, more
polarized, more embittered as the gulf between few rich and multitudes of poor
ever-widens. Even today in Egypt, hardly any journalists or intellectuals will meet with
Israelis. Thesituation has gotten so bad that even Hosni Mubarak was unable to attend the
recent Washington "summit" with Arafat and Netanyahu, and he has even publicly
talked of the possibility of war. Egypt today is held together by covert CIA involvement,
U.S. economic "assistance", and ever-increasing brutal police-state tactics.
Rarely however, do the details of the terrible Egyptian torture methods reach public view.
This report from the Africa News Service deserves careful reading, and considerable
praise.)
E G Y P T T A R G E T S W O M E N I N A N T I - M U S L I M WAR
( Africa News Service )
Cairo - October 4, 1996: Amal Farouk's screams keep her three children, mother and
neighbours awake every night. If she falls asleep, the nightmare returns and she wakes
screaming: "No, please, I beg you, keep your hands off me, don't rape me!"
Amal (28) is one of many Egyptian women taken hostage and tortured by the authorities
to collect evidence against men in their families, suspected Muslim militants.
The government's new strategy of targeting women, officials admit privately, is an
unpleasant price to be paid in the all-out war against Islamic terrorists. The deliberate
degradation of women by arrest, torture and sexual abuse is intended to break the spirit
of male militants seeking to overthrow the government of HosniMubarak.
"In our culture, the humiliation of a wife or mother or sister will break a man's
back," says Dr Aida Seif al Dowla, a psychiatrist from the Cairo Centre for the
Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, who confirms that women related to
Islamic activists have been tortured.
Amal was arrested hours after police captured her husband, Ahmed al Sayid, who is now
serving a 25-year sentence for an assassination attempt on Egypt's Minister of
Information.
"In the beginning the interrogators were nice to me. They wanted me to appear on
television to condemn my husband as a lunatic and wife-beater. When I refused, they turned
ugly.
"First they mocked me for wearing a veil. Then they blindfolded me, stripped me
down to my underwear and hung me by my hands from a hook in the ceiling. There were at
least seven men in the room and some of them were telling me how much they would enjoy
raping me.
"As they taunted me, they whipped me with cable wire, kicked me in the stomach and
sliced open my back with razors. This lasted for more than two hours. While I was in this
room, I could hear my husband screaming in pain and shouting "Ya awlad al sharameet
ana marafsh aya haga. [You sons of bitches, I don't know anything.]" It was obvious
that they were torturing him.'
Amal said that the following day an officer named Mahmoud Hosny had taken her to
another room and stripped her naked. "He told me I should divorce my husband and
remarry. He said the government would pay me a lot of money if I signed a confession
implicating my husband as a terrorist.
"When I refused, he brought in another man and told him, `This bitch is all yours.
Rape her.' " When the man began to undress, Amal shouted, "Okay, okay, I will
sign anything you want." Nine days later she was released without charge.
Weeks later, Amal asked permission to attend her husband's trial in a military court -
she wanted to tell the judges that her confession had been extorted under torture. Her
request was denied for "security reasons", but the judges later announced that
they had accepted her written statement to the police.
Amal's lawyer, Montasr Zayat, filed a complaint against her interrogators with the
Ministry of the Interior. The authorities responded by despatching a police squad to take
Amal back into detention. They told her that she was being punished for tryingto bring the
police into disrepute.
"She was held for 10 days, during which she was brutally tortured," said
Zayat. "They wanted her to withdraw her complaint and to say that it was all lies.
They used electric shocks and one of the interrogators sexually abused her."
On her release she had to be hospitalised for two weeks and received psychiatric care.
"I am 66 years old and I have never seen such savagery in my life," said
Amal's mother, Um Mohammed. "What they are doing to these women is not only against
Islam, it is also against human rights."
Um Mohammed is now nursing her daughter and her six-year- old grandson, Mohammed, whose
teeth were broken when he tried to prevent police from taking away his mother. "The
officer who came to our house kicked him in the mouth," said Um Mohammed. "There
was blood everywhere because most of his teeth were smashed. They refused to take him to
hospital."
Zayat said the strategy will backfire. "By holding women as hostages, the police
are inviting more violence, and even retaliation. Some police officers have been
assassinated after being accused of torturing the wives and sisters of Muslim
fundamentalists.
"These Islamic groups have a special sensitivity when it comes to women. As far as
they are concerned, women represent a red line that should not be crossed."
Zayat and his Egyptian legal colleagues say the harassment of women has increased in
the past two years. They accuse the government of misusing emergency regulations which
allow the authorities to hold suspects for six months without trial.
Jihan Ibrahim Abdel Hamid, a mother of three, has been in detention since August 1994.
She claims that her only "crime" is her husband's alleged involvement in the
assassination of Dr Farag Foda, Egypt's most outspoken critic of Islamic terrorists.
Police suspect her of hiding weapons, but she has never been brought before a judge.
When a civil court ordered her release earlier this year, Abdel Hamid was transferred
to police headquarters in Cairo. There she was served with a new detention order for a
further six months. The Cairo Centre for Women's Legal Aid has written to the Minister of
the Interior asking for her release.
`We believe there is no justification for Jihan's continued captivity," said
representative Izzah Suleiman. "We are very concerned at this phenomenon of increased
state violence against women. I have met three other women who had miscarried as a result
of physical and psychological torture."
One of the women who miscarried was Fatima Muawad, the wife of Safwat, one of the
leaders of the Gamayat Islamia Fundamentalist Movement. Muawad was three months pregnant
when she was arrested and taken to the Abdin police station in Cairo. A medical report
provided by her lawyer confirms that she had lost her baby as a result of being kicked
repeatedly in the stomach. She was never formally charged. Police told her she would
remain in prison until her fugitive husband had been arrested.
Earlier this year, police arrested 12 other women for similar reasons in Cairo's Ain
Shams district.
"Some of these women, whose ages range from 21 to 55, were kicked in the stomach
and face, and hung upside down at the police station," said Zayat. "We have
established that police General Fadi Habashi personally supervised their interrogation.
They were all wives, mothers or sisters of suspected Muslim fundamentalists.
"We have now filed an official complaint against this general, with supporting
medical reports and affidavits. The Ministry of the Interior has promised an
investigation, but so far no disciplinary action has been taken.'
Ministry officials blame fundamentalists for involving their women. "Many of these
women have been officially recruited to the so- called jihad," a senior security
officer said. "We have even discovered that some of them actively participated in
terrorist attacks, including firing at policemen and planting bombs.
"They are also used for surveillance, intelligence- gathering and carrying
messages for their husbands. In some cases, they even dress in the latest Western fashions
to avoid arousing suspicion.'
Police sources claim that most of the women in detention have been trained to use
firearms. When police raided a fundamentalist hideout in Asyut, wives joined their
husbands in returning fire. The nine-hour battle ended with the death of Ahmed Zaki
Sharif, one of Egypt's most wanted terrorists.
"I am against violence and I have never taken part in any terrorist act, "
said Amal. "Don't believe the government when they say women are being recruited by
the Islamic movement. What they will not tell you is that women are not accepted as
members of Islamic groups. Our role, according to the holy book, is to look after our
children and our families. Nothing can break us."
