CAIRO (Middle East Eye) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has pardoned several police officers convicted and jailed for torturing Egyptian civilians to death.
Documents leaked to the London-based Arabi21 news site reveal that Sisi issued a decree to pardon police officers to mark National Police Day on 25 January, which is also the anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
The documents, leaked by a prominent Egyptian security source, state the names of police officers who were convicted in three cases for torturing Egyptian citizens to death in various police stations.
Human rights activists see Sisi’s move as encouraging police officers to act with impunity.
“By using his power in presidential pardon, Sisi intends to protect the army and police from accountability,” Ahmed Mefreh, director the Geneva-based Committee for Justice (CFJ), told Middle East Eye.
In the few cases in which civil society pressure and the gravity of crimes committed has led to charges against police officers reaching court, Sisi has “covered their backs by pardoning them”, Mefreh said.
“The regime exploits the media coverage of presidential pardons as propaganda to cover the crimes of the army and policemen convicted by courts,” he said.
Five police officers convicted by a court in 2020 for torturing to death Magdy Makeen, a 53-year-old fish vendor, were included in Sisi’s pardon.
They were working at a police station in al-Amireyah in Cairo in November 2016 when Makeen was taken in, later dying in custody. The following month, ten policemen were charged with torturing him to death.
Egypt’s public prosecution charged them with assaulting Makeen so badly that he died inside the police station, and forging the official documents of the incident to mislead the investigation.
There are 65,000 political prisoners and 26,000 people in pre-trial detention in Egypt, according to the Arab Network for Human Rights Information.