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Ahmad Abdallah was severely tortured in detention. According to his family, he has a broken rib and lost the use of his right eye due to these ill-treatments. Sadate Abdallah, the detainee's brother, reported that when he accompanied his mother and wife to Tora Prison to visit Ahmad on 12 May, they could clearly see the bruises left by torture on his body and face. Ahmad told them that this was the result of the violent beatings he was subjected to and the lack of proper medical care. Ahmad also said that he was detained in solitary confinement in a dark cell with dirty water all over the floor. He reportedly does not have the right to wear the prisoner's uniform but is obliged to stay in this tiny cell in only his underwear, without even being allowed a blanket.
"Even if one day you are released, you will leave here handicapped or dead" Tora Prison, inspector
Sadate added that the Tora Prison inspector was deliberately attacking his brother, continually humiliating and threatening him. During one of the family's visits to the prison, the inspector went as far as to expel Ahmad's family. Then, he put Ahmad on the floor, kicking him repeatedly in the neck and threatening him: "Even if one day you are released, you will leave here handicapped or dead".
Sadate confirmed that his brother is indeed now handicapped, but that he also lost one of his children and that Ahmad and Sadate's mother had to be hospitalized after her visit to see her son in Tora Prison.
After an attack on Thani Al-Arish police station, the police started following Ahmad without any evidence of his involvement in the case. Knowing that he was followed, he spontaneously went to the police trying to prove with numerous testimonies that he was not present in the area at the time of the attack. He wanted, by doing this, to be treated according to the law. No one can possibly accept to be humiliated or tortured in the way he was.
Sadate insisted on the fact that it was a common practice of the authorities to arbitrarily and randomly arrest people from the Sinai without any evidence of their involvement in such events. This is exactly what has happened to dozens of members of Abdallah's family who were arrested without any proof after the Taba explosion.
Ahmad Abdallah is not the first torture victim in Tora Prison. Indeed, last March four detainees went on hunger strike to protest against the torture and ill-treatments they were subjected to. In October 2011, Issam Atta died there, reportedly due to the torture he was subjected to and the lack of any proper medical care to treat the results of this torture.
Ahmed Mefreh, legal researcher at Alkarama's office in Cairo stated: "It appears that there is no political will to put an end to the practice of torture by security officials whose primary duty should be to protect Egypt's citizen's basic rights and not violate them. Systematic impunity of the perpetrators demonstrates that the government is responsible for the ongoing practice of torture after the revolution."