On 6 November 2014, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) concerning the case of Sabri Ahmed Mehdi, a father of six detained and tortured since his arrest by the Egyptian authorities on 22 July 2014.
Early in the morning, the police forces of Imbaba, a neighbourhood located in northern Giza, entered Mehdi's residence, arrested him without showing a judicial warrant or explaining the rationale for his arrest, and forcibly brought him to the police station where he was tortured. He was then transferred to the Security Forces camp near Alexandria's road where he was detained incommunicado for a week, and subjected to more torture. Despite the physical signs of torture on his body and his deteriorating health, the public prosecutor did not see fit to submit him to a medical examination.
To date, Mehdi is still held in the Security Forces camp, without due process. Given the charges held against him – being "affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood" – Mehdi's family worries that he will be subjected to more tortures during his detention.
In light of this information, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the SRT asking him to call upon the Egyptian authorities to release Mehdi and, at the very least, to guarantee his mental and physical health by allowing him to see a doctor and by investigating the acts of torture that he was the victim of in the hands of the security services.
Alkarama also recalls the recent recommendations of the Committee against Torture in Egypt, and in particular its obligation to ensure that every detained persons can consult a doctor and a lawyer without delay, as well as its obligation to abolish the practice of incommunicado detention and to ensure that all complaints relating to torture or ill-treatments committed in detention should be subject to independent and impartial investigations.
For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1007 Ext: 810)