MOI to investigate video of police sexually assaulting 2 women in Daqahlia

After a video was leaked showing police forces beating and sexually assaulting two women in Daqahlia, on Thursday the Interior Ministry said it would launch an investigation into the matter.

Security sources claimed the women were accompanying a group of suspects arrested in a security raid in the northern governorate, the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

The video shows four men forced to face the wall while two women are severely beaten by security forces. As they attempt to cover their faces and plead with the men to stop, the women are forced to pose for the camera as they are subjected to physical and verbal assaults.

The low-ranking officer filming the raid then directs one of his colleagues to pose with the women for the camera and display his gun in a show of pride, threatening the women that the video would be published on Facebook and go viral to “expose” them.

Torture accusations against the police have become par for the course in Egypt. During the Universal Periodic Review of Egypt’s human rights record at the United Nations headquarters in November, several countries recommended that Egypt take steps to halt the torture practices endemic to its security apparatus.

On Friday, Egypt said that it would accept all those UN recommendations that do not violate its Constitution or Penal Code.

The ministry’s grim record of rights violations came to the forefront once again a few days ago, when political prisoners held at Abu Zaabal prison leaked a letter detailing the abuses perpetrated against inmates there.

“All the political prisoners were tortured, and the cells were raided by masked Central Security Forces, which created panic,” the letter read. “We were attacked with batons and dogs, which led to several injuries, and others passed out due to tear gas.”

Security forces reportedly took 15 detainees from their cells and tortured them for three hours in front of the others. They were stripped of their clothes and forced to utter profanities, the prisoners claimed. 

Aida Saif al-Dawla, founder of Al-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, told Mada Masr that torture is a state policy, not a problem confined to a few rogue police officers.

“I have not seen the video, and I don’t need to. It [torture] is a state policy, and they don’t deny it,” she said. “The Ministry of Interior wants to say that it is the highest authority in the state.”

Dawla also said that the officer’s threat to publish the video on Facebook is consistent with an ongoing policy to humiliate and shame detainees. She referred to the high-profile case of Emad al-Kabir, a torture victim who was also filmed by security forces as he was assaulted, and ultimately raped, by police officers. The video went viral shortly thereafter, provoking widespread condemnation. The officers appearing in the video were sentenced to three years in prison.