Rights Groups Call for Official Action against Torturing a Journalist

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, The Arab Council for Supporting Fair Trials and Hisham Mubarak Center for Law submitted details of the incident (including deliberate beating and insulting) to the Attorney General.

Some police officers had arrested Kamal Murad last Tuesday June 17 after he created a reportage showing them beating a number of peasants in Ezbet Muharram village and forcing them to sign leases with one of the landowners in courtesy of their police officers friends—sons of the owner.

The police officers have beaten and insulted Murad, and threatened to imprison him. Murad was surprised when he learned that he was accused of attacking police officers and inciting farmers against security forces.

The journalist of the opposition Al Fagr newspaper Kamal Murad was the journalist who publicized the famous torture of driver Emad El Kebir.

Gamal Eid Executive Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said the attack of the police officers on Kamal Murad confirmed their desire to take revenge against the journalist who exposed a major case of torture in Egypt.

“The Interior Minister has to convert his written statement to real action to make other police officers abstain from practicing torture,” he said.

The three rights groups decided to form a front for the defense of Kamal Murad as a step towards putting an end to the phenomenon of police impunity and reducing torture and ill-treatment of journalist that is threateningly on the rise.