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Egypt's Unchecked Repression

[Washington Post] Saad Eddin Ibrahim - Rumors of a secret government death squad tasked with silencing detractors of the ruling Mubarak family have spiked in recent weeks. On Aug. 8, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported that it had confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths - three of which took place this year - that the group "strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment." The organization previously found that while Egypt's population nearly doubled during the first 25 years of Hosni Mubarak's regime, the number of prisons grew more than fourfold and that the number of detainees held for more than one year without charge or indictment grew to more than 20,000. Egypt's jails contain some 80,000 political prisoners. The independent daily Eldestour recently reported that the security police forces comprise 1.4 million officers, nearly four times the size of the Egyptian army. The writer is a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo.
2007-08-21 01:00:00
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