Clashes at Rabaa al-Adaiya, August 2013.
At
any one time, the third floor can hold well above 300 prisoners, with the total
number of inmates likely to be higher, since some detainees have left and
others have taken their places.
Amnesty
believes that up to 20 have been released from any kind of custody. Lawyers
also say that a number of others have “reappeared” in civilian jails, accused
of terrorism charges based on confessions extracted after torture and
interrogation.
The
interrogation and systematic torture of Azouli’s prisoners takes place in a
separate building – known as S-1 – a few minutes’ drive from the prison. About
10 prisoners are taken there at the middle of each day. Once their names are
called, they are let out of their cells to blindfold themselves and form a
line. Each survivor said that at this point they would be beaten then led
downstairs to a minibus, where they would be beaten again. Prisoners are then
driven the short journey to S-1, where they are usually led up a set of wooden
stairs to a first-floor office. There the detainees wait – still blindfolded –
until they are called one by one to a next-door room.
When
Khaled was first called, on his first full day at Azouli, he remembers the
unnerving sound of an officer silently flicking his lighter on and off for
several minutes before asking a series of questions about the organisation of
protests.
“And
then the torture started,” Khaled recalled. “It started with electric shocks in
every place in my body. [The officer] called the military policemen and told
them: ‘Take off his clothes.’ They took me out of the room. I took everything
off apart from my boxers. They said: ‘Make yourself totally naked.’ I said no.
The officer said: ‘Bring him in.’
“I started to give him some names. He felt I
had lied, so he ordered the soldiers to make me totally naked. The electric
shocks were in every place in my body, especially the most sensitive areas – my
lips, the places with nerves. Behind the ear and lips. Under the shoulders.”
After
the electrocutions, Khaled’s hands were tied behind him. He then claims he was
hanged naked by the ensuing knot from a window frame – a torture technique
known as the Balango method, which left his shoulders and wrists in
excruciating pain. Two-and-a-half hours later he was taken down and returned to
the cells.
Two
other former inmates report similar experiences, though one says he was tied in
a different position, and the other – Salah, a man in his 20s – said he was
allowed to keep wearing his clothes while being electrocuted.
“The
officer asked me if I knew certain people from a list,” said Salah. “If I said
no, he would electrocute me … My answers were, of course, no: I don’t stay very
much in [my hometown]. So he would electrocute me.
“The
electrocution was over my clothes, but on the testicles. I was sitting on the
floor, handcuffed. He was sitting on the small table, and would stretch his
hands to electrocute me in my testicles.”
The
victims cannot know for certain who tortured them. But all three believe that
the interrogations were led by officers from military intelligence – the army
wing headed until 2012 by Abdel
Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s
new president – with involvement from the secret police, known informally in Egypt as amn
ad-dawla, or state security.
One
interviewee said he had been brought to Azouli by state security, who handed
him over to the army.
According
to Ahmed Helmy, a lawyer who represents former Azouli prisoners, many detainees
are tortured by military intelligence until they memorise specific confessions
to acts of terrorism. Then they are transferred to state security offices where
they are asked to repeat these confessions to a police prosecutor. Other
detainees from civilian jails confirm meeting Azouli prisoners at this stage in
their incarceration.
If
they repeat their memorised confessions correctly, Azouli prisoners are then
“reappeared” in a civilian jail, where torture is less systematic, and where
they are allowed visits from lawyers and relatives. But, says Helmy: “If they
don’t confess exactly how the security services want, they’re sent back to
Azouli for more torture.”
Helmy
represents some of the detainees who he says have been transferred from Azouli
to civilian jails. He says some of them may have committed parts of the crimes
to which they have confessed, but because of the way their confessions were
extracted it was impossible to be sure.
“You
can’t know if these people have committed these crimes or not,” Helmy said.
“Under the pressure of torture you can admit to anything. It’s clear that some
people are admitting to things because of the torture.”
The
mother of one former Azouli detainee – now transferred to a civilian jail –
said it had taken her son Omar four days of torture and three trips to a civil
prosecutor before he would agree to recite his forced confession. Omar’s mother
said she feared he had died because during his time at Azouli no state
institution would reveal his whereabouts.
She
only found Omar again when he re-emerged at an official jail weeks later. “The
skin on his nose was raw to the bone,” she remembered of their reunion at a
family visit inside the second prison.
“There was a cut with the depth of a fingertip
on his neck, which came from being beaten with a metal stick. There were two
big wounds on his wrists from the hanging.
“They
electrocuted him on his testicles. He said he was threatened with rape and that
they used to hang them naked. He said he was prevented from going to the
bathroom for six days and they kept him blindfolded for ten days.
“He
asked me if we had had any visits, because they threatened that they would
arrest his [female relatives], rape them, film it, and then show them the
videos.”
The
three former prisoners interviewed directly by the Guardian said that they were
not tortured at S-1 as many times as detainees such as Omar. Over time,
officials appeared to lose interest in them, which may partly explain their
eventual release.
Summarising
the difference between Azouli and notorious civilian jails such as Cairo’s Scorpion prison,
Helmy said: “Scorpion is an official prison under the supervision of the
prosecution and it’s visible. But Azouli is in a military area. It’s forbidden
for any civilians to go inside.
“When
we ask the civil prosecution to investigate people inside Azouli, they say they
don’t have any jurisdiction to go there. So it’s a place where military
intelligence can take their time and torture people without any oversight.”
At
Azouli, prisoners subjected to systematic torture lack even a hypothetical
legal redress.
“It
gives you an idea of how confident the security forces are today,” said
Amnesty’s Mohamed Elmessiry.
“They
don’t care about the rule of law. They are holding people for over 90 days and
subjecting them to ongoing torture without any judicial oversight. These
practices are a devastating blow to detainees’ rights, as enshrined under both
Egyptian and international law.”
As
Khaled, one of the three survivors, summarised: “Your whole life there is a
living tomb. No one knows anything about where you are.”
A
senior military officer acknowledged the existence of Azouli prison, but did
not respond within a fortnight to specific written allegations, and turned down
a request to visit the jail.
Additional reporting by Manu Abdo. All detainees’ names have been changed.
The
‘security solution’
Azouli
is one of the clearest examples of a resurgent security state that was
never reformed under the successors to Hosni Mubarak (including the Muslim
Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, under whose presidency security officials were
frequently accused of excessive force and torture) and in the past 12 months
has exerted itself in almost unprecedented fashion.
Throughout
last summer and early autumn, police and soldiers engaged in six mass killings of
alleged Morsi supporters unmatched by any other in Egypt’s modern history. They began
with the
deaths of 51 Morsi supporters on 8 July 2013 and peaked with the
clearance of a protest camp – Rabaa al-Adawiya– at which at least 637 died.
Post-Morsi
governments have said the “security solution” is necessary to counter
terrorism, a narrative made possible by a wave of jihadist-led bombings and
ambushes in the Sinai peninsula – most
notoriously, the assassination of 25 police conscripts in August. Islamist-led
attacks on churches and police stations in the days after Rabaa also helped to
justify it.
According
to the interior ministry, at least 16,000 Egyptians have been arrested for
political reasons since July 2013, though one independent estimate suggests the
figure may be as high as 41,000.
As
the interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, has admitted, many were arrested
arbitrarily. “Every Friday, no less than 500 to 600 get arrested,” he said in
January. “At the beginning, we used to wait for the demonstration to turn
violent, but now we confront them once they congregate. When we confront them,
there are some that run. But whoever we can grab, we detain.”
Most
of the detainees are Morsi supporters. But the crackdown has widened to include
anyone whose beliefs, actions or lifestyle threatens the state. Liberal
academics have been banned from overseas travel, while those detained include
allegedly gay men, at least 16 journalists and hundreds of secular activists,
including figureheads of the 2011 uprising.
‘Bring
him in.’
“I started to give him some names. He felt I
had lied, so he ordered the soldiers to make me totally naked. The electric
shocks were in every place in my body, especially the most sensitive areas – my
lips, the places with nerves. Behind the ear and lips. Under the shoulders.”
After
the electrocutions, Khaled’s hands were tied behind him. He then claims he was
hanged naked by the ensuing knot from a window frame – a torture technique
known as the Balango method, which left his shoulders and wrists in
excruciating pain. Two-and-a-half hours later he was taken down and returned to
the cells.
Two
other former inmates report similar experiences, though one says he was tied in
a different position, and the other – Salah, a man in his 20s – said he was
allowed to keep wearing his clothes while being electrocuted.
“The
officer asked me if I knew certain people from a list,” said Salah. “If I said
no, he would electrocute me … My answers were, of course, no: I don’t stay very
much in [my hometown]. So he would electrocute me.
“The
electrocution was over my clothes, but on the testicles. I was sitting on the
floor, handcuffed. He was sitting on the small table, and would stretch his
hands to electrocute me in my testicles.”
The
victims cannot know for certain who tortured them. But all three believe that
the interrogations were led by officers from military intelligence – the army
wing headed until 2012 by Abdel
Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s
new president – with involvement from the secret police, known informally in Egypt as amn
ad-dawla, or state security.
One
interviewee said he had been brought to Azouli by state security, who handed him
over to the army.
According
to Ahmed Helmy, a lawyer who represents former Azouli prisoners, many detainees
are tortured by military intelligence until they memorise specific confessions
to acts of terrorism. Then they are transferred to state security offices where
they are asked to repeat these confessions to a police prosecutor. Other
detainees from civilian jails confirm meeting Azouli prisoners at this stage in
their incarceration.
If
they repeat their memorised confessions correctly, Azouli prisoners are then
“reappeared” in a civilian jail, where torture is less systematic, and where
they are allowed visits from lawyers and relatives. But, says Helmy: “If they
don’t confess exactly how the security services want, they’re sent back to
Azouli for more torture.”
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