Guardian: Leaked videos show detainees being tortured inside Cairo police station

The Guardian said on Monday it obtained two leaked videos showing evidence of beating and torture by Egyptian security officers in Cairo.

The two videos are believed to have been shot last November in a police station in the Salam City district to the east of Cairo, according to The Guardian.

One video shows two detainees stripped down to their underwear and left to hang from a metal grate by their arms, which are cuffed behind their backs. 

“Look, they are torturing our colleagues, they’re tying them to the steel [grate]. They torture us and they’re telling us we’re next,” a voice says in the video from behind the camera, calling on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to look into these incidents.

The other video shows detainees in a crowded cell displaying multiple bruises and wounds on their bodies to the camera. One detainee can be seen with an open wound on his head. Another detainee addresses the camera, saying, “This is the investigative police. They don’t even want to bring us food.”

The Guardian said detainees in the videos named multiple police officers, whom the newspaper verified through local news reports as serving at the Salam police station.

Egypt has a long history of systematic use of physical violence and torture in detention centers and police stations, which continues despite persistent international and local condemnations as well as promises of “criminal justice reform” in the new human rights strategy announced last September. 

Recent years have witnessed multiple reports of detained activists beaten and tortured in prison, as well as several cases of detainees being tortured to death by security officers, including the murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in 2016.

Last June, on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, six local rights organizations condemned “the Egyptian government’s systematic practice of torture against prisoners” and the “complete impunity” the perpetrators enjoy against being prosecuted by the justice system.