''Egypt should investigate and discipline police and plainclothes security officials who beat demonstrators protesting the Iraq war and tortured some of those detained,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in the 40 -page report, 'Security Forces Abuse of Anti-War Demonstrators'.
The document details how the Washington-backed Mubarak regime committed serious human rights violations during and following large demonstrations in Cairo's al-Tahrir Square Mar. 20-21, against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in protest but the government used overwhelming force in quelling the demonstrations.
According to the human rights watchdog, the regime used excessive force in dispersing demonstrators and bystanders Mar. 21 ''in violation of the right to freedom of assembly”.
The regime also used arbitrary arrest and detention, including of children; beatings and mistreatment of persons in detention, in some cases amounting to torture; and security officials failed to provide medical care to those seriously injured as a result, adds HRW.
”Plainclothes officers viciously attacked protestors with pipes and clubs, and arrested demonstrators and bystanders without cause,” said Joe Stork, acting executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW.
”Then the jailers beat those they considered to be the ringleaders.”
The group quoted a demonstrator who was arrested after being ''caught by five or six men”.
''They took two wooden chairs and broke them on me while I lay on the ground,” said the torture victim.
”I was lying on my right side. They said, 'turn him over on the other side'. I decided this was going to last too long so I pretended to lose consciousness, but when they picked me up by my arms and legs, the pain from the fracture caused me to scream, so they saw I was not unconscious and started beating me again with the chair legs.''
Authorities arrested some 800 people Mar. 21, at least 61 of who were ordered held for further investigation. The government charged them with destroying public property, inciting unrest, and failing to disperse when ordered.
The Egyptian regime receives nearly two billion dollars in aid from the United States every year, but many Egyptians say the aid does not reach them but is used by cliques and elites around Mubarak.
Washington has mostly linked the aid to how well the Mubarak regime cooperates with Israel -- with which it signed a peace treaty in 1979 -- but overlooked its practices against Egyptians. Human rights issues, to the dismay of many Egyptians, have taken a distant back seat among the conditions attached to the U.S. aid to the ruthless regime.
On Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush praised Egypt for leading the way toward peace in the Middle East, and called on it to now ”show the way toward democracy”.
Washington has also traditionally overlooked torture and killings against Egypt's Islamist opposition, which includes non-violent organisations. Islamist groups say there are some 42,000 people behind bars without trial for alleged connections to the Islamic movement.
In March, security forces also arrested two members of parliament for their alleged roles in organising or participating in the demonstrations.
The HRW said arrests were based primarily on how critical protesters are of the government's policies rather than for alleged criminal acts.
''Arrests carried out in the days following the demonstrations were without judicial warrants, in violation of Egyptian law,” it said.
At least six children were also arrested Mar. 21, and detained with unrelated adults in conditions of severe overcrowding and at risk of abuse, in violation of global standards, adds the report.
One boy of 16 said that he and other children were tortured.
Ashraf Ibrahim, an engineer and antiwar activist, is scheduled to go to trial Dec. 16 before a Higher Emergency State Security Court on charges of ”sending false information to foreign bodies-foreign human rights organisations”.
Fearing attention on its human rights abuses, the regime considers contacts with foreign institutions a violation of the country's laws, something that many Egyptians say is untrue.
HRW said the charges against Ibrahim criminalize most forms of peaceful dissent, and appealed to the government to drop the charges and release him immediately and unconditionally.
The group also said that it will honour Aida Seif El Dawla, an Egyptian psychiatrist and activist who has fought to end the practice of torturing prisoners in the country of 72 million people.
At least 13 people have died because of torture by Egyptian police and security forces since March 2002, according to HRW.
On Wednesday, The Egyptian Human Rights Organisation said a member of the Muslim Brotherhood died because of torture at the headquarters of the Egyptian state security forces in Cairo.
”Thousands of men, women, and children live with the physical and psychological scars wrought by electroshocks, beatings, suspension from ceilings, and sexual violence,” said the group in a statement.
Neither the police who commit the torture nor their supervisors who condone it are punished, it added.
”Everyone in Egypt knows torture is commonplace, but those who speak out face the risk of torture themselves,” said Clarisa Bencomo, a researcher in HRW's children's rights division
The group demanded that the government conduct an impartial inquiry into the allegations of torture and ill treatment of detainees in connection with the antiwar demonstrations.
”The government should make public the names of these security officials who were responsible for ordering, carrying out or condoning these attacks,” Stork said.