Egypt’s Public Prosecution Fails to Investigate Detainees’ Torture Complaints

By Tony Shenouda (a pseudonym)

For two months, Afaf*, an interior designer in her sixties, travelled 100 kilometres there and back with a bag of food and psychiatric medication to visit her son Zain* at a prison west of Cairo. She returned home without seeing him: he had been placed in a disciplinary ward and denied visits, food from his family and medication.

Afaf finally spoke to him for a few seconds through a small wire-covered window in the vehicle taking detainees to court for detention-renewal hearings. He told her he had been tortured. She immediately applied for an exceptional prison visit and, after delays, was allowed ten minutes.

During the visit, Zain moved towards a corner, trying to avoid surveillance cameras, and gestured for his mother to approach. He was barefoot. Holding his fingers through the fence, he said: “Look, they pulled out my nails, Mum.” He showed her marks on his back and burns on his legs that he attributed to guards extinguishing cigarettes on his body.

Shocked by what she saw, Afaf was urged by her son to complain to the Public Prosecution.

The following morning, she submitted a complaint to the chief prosecutor, attaching Zain’s medical records from government hospitals and requesting an investigation and a forensic examination of his injuries.

El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture’s “Archive of Oppression” reports recorded 1,569 accounts of individual and collective torture in detention between 2017 and 2023. The centre describes its documentation as only the tip of the iceberg, drawing on material collected from news outlets and social media rather than a complete census.

The reporter interviewed five released detainees and one person still imprisoned. All had complained to prosecutors or judges of torture or sexual violence by police. They described their pleas being recorded in hearing minutes without a substantive investigation.

Judicial documents obtained for this investigation show prosecutors relying on the police themselves to gather information, evidence and witnesses about torture allegations involving police personnel. These inquiries often end with complaints shelved because information could not be collected.

Local and international rights organisations and the UN Committee Against Torture have criticised failures to investigate, warning that they reinforce impunity.

Article 52 of Egypt’s constitution prohibits torture in all its forms and provides that the crime is not subject to a limitation period. Police evidence-gathering operates under prosecutorial supervision, with the Public Prosecution responsible for investigation and criminal proceedings under the constitutional and procedural framework cited in the original report.

Human Rights Watch’s research on impunity for torture identifies ineffective investigations and the conflict created when police investigate allegations against their own colleagues.

Attempts to amend the law to secure accountability have themselves faced repression, according to the cases examined here.

Complaints shelved—and pressure to withdraw

Abdel Rahman Tarek, known as “Moka,” says a prosecutor tried to frighten him into withdrawing a complaint against the head of investigations at Qasr El Nil police station in central Cairo. He alleged the officer beat him while he was serving a daily police-supervision order.

Former National Council for Human Rights member George Ishaq supported him by submitting a complaint to the human-rights department at the prosecutor general’s office. A prosecutor summoned Moka to hear his account as the alleged victim.

Moka says the prosecutor warned that the officer might fabricate another case and return him to prison, and urged him to drop the complaint.

Moka refused. He says he was subsequently imprisoned again. He had previously spent years in detention following a conviction connected to protesting civilian trials before military courts.

“I told the prosecution there were surveillance cameras throughout the station when I was assaulted. I asked them to review the footage to establish the officer’s responsibility, but they did nothing,” he says.

According to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, Moka spent seven years in prison and survived a suicide attempt after protesting restrictions on family food deliveries and personal items, insults and confinement in a disciplinary ward.

He continued complaining about prison conditions and alleged torture. “I submitted many complaints to prosecutors from prison, but they neither replied nor paid attention,” he says.

He points to another case, lawyer Tarek El Selkawy of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, who, Moka says, lost his ability to walk after electric shocks and beatings during enforced disappearance at a State Security facility.

A lasting disability

According to complaints sent by El Selkawy’s lawyers to the prosecutor general and prosecution offices in Mansoura, uniformed and plainclothes forces raided his home in the city in November 2018 and arrested him. His lawyers say he then disappeared for 24 days, during which they could not establish where he was held or why.

El Nadeem’s 2017 research describes torture as accompanying enforced disappearance in the cases it documents.

Before arrest, El Selkawy had chronic migraine attacks that affected awareness and balance. He regularly saw a neurologist, took daily medication and had been advised to avoid physical and nervous strain.

Judicial documents show the National Security officer responsible for his arrest stating that he had been in a normal condition when detained. On November 24, 2018, at 6 p.m., however, El Selkawy appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution carried by security personnel, with paralysis affecting his left arm and leg.

The officer’s account gave an arrest date of November 23 at 10 p.m., the evening before the prosecution appearance. The prosecution accepted that date, the documents indicate, without investigating the discrepancy or El Selkawy’s complaint that torture had left him unable to move.

Amnesty International reported that prosecutors failed to investigate families’ and lawyers’ complaints of altered arrest dates in 87 of 117 cases examined. In those cases, National Security records placed arrest on the day before prosecutorial questioning, despite earlier telegrams from families and lawyers reporting disappearance.

El Selkawy’s defence continued sending complaints seeking identification and prosecution of those he said had tortured him.

On March 18, 2019, prosecutors summoned his defence team. The lawyers requested that El Selkawy be brought from prison and questioned about the people responsible. Prosecutors then tasked Mansoura First Police Station’s investigations unit with gathering information.

At the investigation’s original publication in January 2025, El Selkawy remained imprisoned, unable to move, serving a 15-year sentence based on a confession he said had been extracted under torture.

Resistance to changing the law

Legal researcher Mohamed Obeid, a specialist in constitutional scrutiny of legislation, says Articles 63 and 232 of Egypt’s Criminal Procedure Law restrict victims’ ability to bring direct criminal proceedings against public officials for offences connected to their duties. The prosecution controls the route to criminal proceedings in these cases, he explains, while many torture complaints never reach trial.

The Geneva-based Arab Organization for Penal Reform consequently pursued compensation through civil courts. Its archive lists 5,821 civil judgments awarding damages for torture between 1991 and 2017.

Director Mohamed Zaree says that after a final judgment, the organisation asks the Interior Ministry to implement it and pay compensation. Limited funds earmarked for this purpose meant survivors waited between three and eight years for payment, he says.

The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms documented 63 police officers and personnel convicted of offences including intentional killing, torture and fatal assault. Its list states that the Court of Cassation acquitted 20, presidential pardons covered 23, and the remainder received prison sentences of three to seven years.

Obeid argues that the narrow conditions in Penal Code Article 126 weaken accountability for torture. They can result in lesser charges, such as abuse of authority or cruel treatment, carrying much lower penalties. Fatal attacks may be classified as assault leading to death rather than the more serious torture-related offence.

These gaps prompted civil-society organisations to propose reform. In 2014–2015, United Group, founded by lawyer Negad El Borai, submitted 163 complaints covering 465 allegations of torture in detention. With no action taken, the group approached judicial inspection seeking timely investigations.

In March 2015 it organised an expert workshop on draft anti-torture legislation intended to reflect constitutional requirements and international standards. The draft was sent to the presidency and relevant ministries, but received no substantive engagement, according to the group.

Instead, two judges involved in preparing the draft were investigated. El Borai was summoned to North Giza Court in the same proceedings. The judges faced six accusations, including preparing anti-torture legislation, pressing the president to enact it and dealing with an allegedly unlawful organisation.

Testimony met with ridicule

Shorouk Amgad, in her twenties, describes being blindfolded, tied to a chair and repeatedly subjected to electric shocks at National Security’s facility in Abbasiya. She says the shocks continued until she collapsed and heard one person warn another that she might die.

She says she regained consciousness to find an officer trying to undo her trousers. Terrified, she cried out that nobody should touch her and that she would say whatever they wanted. Other officers entered and placed her on a chair. Under threats, she described working as a journalist writing political and economic reports for television channels opposed to Egypt’s government.

Shorouk says questioning continued for eight hours. When she requested a toilet break while in pain and bleeding during menstruation, the officer mocked her. She says he repeatedly threatened rape and forced virginity testing.

The violence documented here extends beyond physical punishment. The Egyptian Front for Human Rights recorded 58 cases of sexual violence against women at National Security premises between 2015 and 2022.

When Shorouk appeared before a prosecutor, she says her mouth was distorted after blows, her hands were bruised from electric shocks and other injuries remained visible. She told him what had happened.

According to Shorouk, he refused to record her full testimony or refer her for forensic examination, writing only that she had been punched by the person arresting her. He said the assaults would be investigated later.

Three months later, another prosecutor asked whether she wanted a forensic examination. She declined because, she says, the visible marks had faded.

“He treated the investigation I requested as a routine entry to write down, without engaging with my account. There was a kind of ridicule.” — Shorouk Amgad

Sexual violence in prisons

Three survivors’ accounts and rights-group reports describe intimate searches on entry to prison or return from court becoming explicit sexual violations.

Shorouk says a guard touched her breasts and intimate areas, asked whether she was a virgin and said she would examine her. The guard ordered her to turn and bend, forced her head down and penetrated her with a finger without a medical glove. Shorouk describes severe pain, screaming and crying.

She remembers another occasion when a guard slowly touched her hands and then intimate parts of her body, leaving her frightened.

The Egyptian Front for Human Rights says similar accounts occurred in other cases and considers the conduct described rape. The investigation found parallels with Mariam Moussa*, who was receiving psychological support after alleged sexual violence in Qanater women’s prison, north of Cairo.

Mariam says a guard handed her white prison clothes and took her to a bathroom. Ordered to remove her clothes, she initially thought this meant her coloured outer clothes. The guard then demanded she remove her underwear too.

Standing naked, trembling and crying, Mariam says the guard grabbed her hair, turned her towards the wall and forced her to bend before assaulting her intimate parts. She froze and could only cry silently. Other prisoners carried her after she collapsed. She says bleeding continued for a week.

Mariam says she had previously endured suspension and electric shocks in other places, but that this assault left her particularly devastated, physically and psychologically.

Accounts documented by the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms and the Egyptian Front describe guards taking women to bathrooms or closed rooms during transfers or returns from court, forcing them to strip and conducting invasive vaginal searches. Some accounts describe fingers covered with a plastic bag picked up from the floor, purportedly for inspection.

Mariam tried to complain about a guard she identified as “Hanem” during a prosecution hearing. She says the prosecutor ridiculed the incident, closed the record without allowing her testimony to be documented and said the matter was outside his remit. The hearing ended with renewal of her detention on an accusation of joining a terrorist organisation.

Her lawyer submitted a complaint to the prosecutor general, reviewed by this investigation, requesting questioning of the prison governor, investigations chief and the named guard concerning alleged sexual assault under Penal Code Article 268. He received no notification that an investigation had opened.

According to the Egyptian Commission, prison authorities then briefly used scanning equipment that had previously remained unused, before returning to manual vaginal searches.

Rule 20 of the UN Bangkok Rules calls for alternative screening, including scanners, to replace invasive searches and reduce their psychological and physical harm.

The Egyptian Commission says prosecution offices often decline to open separate investigations into harassment and sexual violence against women in detention.

Journalist Solafa Magdy was recovering from complicated surgery to remove a uterine tumour. She says she was nevertheless forced to undress and subjected to an invasive vaginal search, without regard to her medical condition, followed by a forced examination that caused prolonged bleeding.

She told a judge she had faced systematic harassment, a forced examination, extended bleeding and being dragged inside the prison. She says attempts to object brought further physical and psychological punishment.

The prosecutor general’s office did not respond to the allegations in this investigation, despite being contacted for its right of reply before the original publication.

* Afaf, Zain and Mariam Moussa are pseudonyms.

This investigation was produced with support from ARIJ.