CAIRO (Middle East Eye) – Leaked videos appear to show the ill-treatment and torture of inmates by security forces in a Cairo police station, 12 years after the death of blogger Khaled Said in police custody sparked Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
In one video, two men can be seen held in a stress position, hanging from their hands on a steel door with their arms tied behind their backs.
Filming secretly from a distance, two men can be heard saying “watch what the government [police] is doing to us, watch how they are torturing our mates and us” adding that the officers threatened that they would be put in a stress position next.
The videos were taken from inside al-Salam Awel Police Station, southeast of Cairo in the impoverished district of Madinat al-Salam.
The videos have been shared widely by Egyptian activists and Arabic media. In them, inmates queue to speak to the camera and show evidence of abuse.
In the reverse hanging technique, sometimes referred to as strappado, victims are hung above the floor with their arms raised backwards behind them.
It is a form of torture that aims to inflict severe pain to the back and shoulders, sometimes causing them to be dislocated.
“Please, president,” one of the men behind the camera can be heard pleading to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, “why is the police doing this to us?”
“Save us,” he repeated six times.
Egypt’s interior ministry has said in the past it does not condone torture but admitted there had been “individual” cases of abuse
The videos were obtained through an anonymous source who says their relatives have been detained inside al-Salam Awel Police Station.
In a different video, a group of possibly 30 inmates inside a cell takes turns showing the camera wounds they allegedly suffered at the hands of police, including bruises on the face, arms and back.
The same inmate then adds that the detainees are crammed in one cell and cannot breathe fresh air. He says they have not been given food.
The camera then pans around the cell showing the inmates, who are mostly in their underwear, pleading for help and naming the officers who allegedly assaulted them.
One man points to two possibly unconscious men lying on the ground: “Here, there is a dying man! And here is another one.”
In impoverished Egyptian neighborhoods, civilians call the police “the government”, signifying that law enforcement is the only governmental presence in these working-class areas.