- Human RightsTorture
- January 5, 2008
- 4 minutes read
Egyptian Police Torturers Show no Mercy to Mentally Handicapped Lad!

A policeman in the southern Egyptian governorate of Monoufia embarked on a very outlandish action. He tortured a mentally-handicapped 16-years old boy to extend the Egyptian”s notoriously systematic torture against citizens to include even those who can”t understand what torture means.
Abdul Rahman Gamal Shebl, a mentally handicapped boy, sneaked from his family”s oversight in their Monofiya house and roamed aimlessly in the streets. Meeting policeman Mohamed Said Al Shennawi in a street in the same village, the mentally handicapped and dump boy threw a handful of dust on the policeman whose ire broke, without any consideration to the boy”s mental case.
The policeman tortured the boy through hanging him in a tree trunk and beat him so violently and shocked him with electricity. He also stripped him of his clothes and beat him in sensitive areas causing fractures in his both jaws in addition to other injuries.
The policeman beat even the victim”s brother when he tried to defend his helpless brother, injuring him and both brothers were sent to hospital, and a complaint about the incident has been submitted to the police.
For his part, the father of the tortured handicapped boy sent many calls for help to officials to protect him, his family and witnesses from the law enforcement officer at Tala policeman who persecuted them to make them withdraw the complaint against the policeman.
The Tala law enforcement officer exercised pressures against the tortured boy”s family and all witnesses to withdraw the complaint. He raids the family”s house everyday at dawn and takes all the family to the police station and detains them for no legal foundation except to intimidate them. He does the same against the eyewitnesses in this case.
For his part, Hamdi Abdul Aziz, a human rights activist, confirmed that Egyptian laws and International Human Rights Charters do not allow torture.
“Although government confesses that tortures committed, but they are even on the increase. It has become a phenomenon of systematic torture in Egypt after the government was previously alleging that they are plans to distort the image of the police. The government statements changed. The government is currently claiming that it carries out huge efforts to stop this phenomenon, as if it sends a message to civil society institutions to forget about this phenomenon” Aziz said to Ikhwanweb.
Hamdi Abd Al-Aziz sees that the government”s method in fighting this crisis hatched nothing on the ground because “Such horrible incidents of torture are continuously increasing.
The human rights activist urged all popular movements and civil society institutions to move and staunchly fight this phenomenon. He added that torture in Egypt is even including human rights activists and opposition activists. So he urges them to press for ending this phenomenon which is committed against Egyptian citizens in general and them in particular.
Hamdi attributed the spread of this phenomenon to two reasons:
First: Not enforcing law on torturers and their accomplices. He said that tougher punishments should be imposed and the tortures and his employers must compensate the victim”s family due to his crime. Through these actions, the tortures will decrease, said Hamdi Abdul Aziz.
He added that that some torturers are sent to trial while others are tolerated. This selectiveness in enforcing law against torture led to increasing the torture crime.
Second: Hamdi sees that the second reason for the spread of torture is the feeling that the Egyptian citizen has become unfortunately valueless, making him liable to any violations.