Egypt’s hidden prison: ‘disappeared’ face torture in Azouli military jail
Patrick Kingsley in Ismailia
The Guardian, Sunday 22 June 2014
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/disappeared-egyptians-torture-secret-military-prison
Hundreds of “disappeared” Egyptians are being tortured and held outside of judicial oversight in a secret military prison, according to Guardian interviews with former inmates, lawyers, rights activists and families of missing persons.
Since at least the end of July 2013, detainees have been taken there blindfolded and forcibly disappeared. Up to 400 are still being tortured and held outside of judicial oversight in the clearest example of a wide-scale crackdown that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have jointly called “repression on a scale unprecedented in Egypt’s modern history”.
Prisoners at Azouli are routinely electrocuted, beaten and hanged naked by their tied wrists for hours until they either give up specific information, memorise confessions or until – in the case of a small group of released former inmates – are deemed of no further use to their interrogators.
They are among at least 16,000 political prisoners arrested since last summer’s regime change. But what sets Azouli’s prisoners apart is the way they are held outside of Egypt’s legal system, in circumstances that allow their jailers to act without fear of even hypothetical consequences.
“Officially, you aren’t there,” said Ayman, a middle-aged man who was brought to Azouli towards the end of 2013, and one of only a few to later be released.
“It isn’t like normal prisons. There is no documentation that says you are there. If you die at Azouli, no one would know.”