An Egyptian court on Saturday ordered the Minister of the Interior to pay compensation of up to LE100,000 to a man who was tortured in a Cairo police station.
Judicial sources said the south Cairo Court Department of Remunerations ordered the minister to pay reparations to Emad Mohamed Ali, also known as Emad al-Kabeer, who was sodomized by police officers in 2006.
Al-Kabeer was tortured and sexually assaulted by two policemen while in custody at the Bulaq al-Dakrur police station in 2006, in one of Egypt's most notorious torture cases.
The officers, Islam Nabih and Reda Fathy, filmed al-Kabeer using cellphone cameras while they forced him to strip, and sodomized him with a wooden stick. Afterward they distributed the video clip among the victim's friends and family, intending to further humiliate and demean him.
The Egyptian authorities released officers Nabih and Fathy at the end of last May after they had served the larger part of their three-year prison sentence on charges of "illegal arrest, torture and rape of the bus driver Emad al-Kabeer during his detainment in 2006."
The two officers were also found guilty of obtaining and distributing materials harmful to public morals and public decency.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights says that torture has become widespread throughout police departments and prisons in Egypt, and that some instances of torture occur in public, in broad daylight, and in citizen's homes, "in clear violation of their dignity and freedom, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and international human rights treaties."
