Autopsy confirms Talaat Shabeeb tortured to death in Luxor jail, 4 officers detained

Four police officers in Luxor will be detained for four days as prosecutors investigate charges that they tortured Talaat Shabeeb to death in jail, a case that has refueled nationwide outrage against endemic police brutality, the Reuters-run Aswat Masriya news site reported Friday.

The Luxor prosecutor also summoned five low-ranking officers for questioning in the case.

The remand came shortly after an autopsy report was released showing that a severe beating to Shabeeb's neck and back broke his vertebrae and ultimately cut his spinal cord, causing his death, Aswat Masriya said.

Shabeeb died on November 24 at the Awamiya police station in Luxor, where he was taken after he was arrested at a coffee shop on drug charges. Since his death, thousands have protested in the Upper Egyptian city against police brutality and to demand justice for his murder.

There has been a recent surge in reports of police forces torturing and murdering detainees across the country. Similar protests erupted in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia last Saturday when a police officer beat Afify Hosny, a doctor, to death.

But the protesters were enraged by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s response. In a surprise visit to the Police Academy on Thursday, he praised the police for “stabilizing the security situation in Egypt at a very critical moment in the country’s history," and insisted human rights abuses were not a systemic problem in Egypt's penal system.

“The mistake of an individual [should not lead to] accusing a whole apparatus," Sisi argued. "We have 300 police stations across Egypt, if we said that violations are in one or two? Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to say thank you and to [remember] your martyrs.”