Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) has called on the authorities in Egypt to begin serious investigations into the alleged beating and torturing of Mohamed el-Baqer, a human rights lawyer.
Development Diaries reports that CIHRS made the call in a tweet following the arrest of el-Baqer’s wife, Nematallah Hisham, on Monday.
Hisham, in a post published online, had revealed harrowing details of her husband’s detention after she visited him in Tora Maximum Security Prison.
She reported that el-Baqer, who has been in detention since 2019, was beaten up, gagged, stripped of his clothes and left to sleep on a cold cell floor.
‘Egyptian authorities arrested Nematallah Hisham, wife of imprisoned HRD Mohamed Baqer, for writing on the beating and #torture her husband suffered recently’, CIHRS tweeted.
El-Baqer, founder and Director of the Adalah Centre for Rights and Freedom, was arrested in 2019 while defending a blogger and activist, Alaa Abdel Fattah.
Amnesty International had in 2019 described the torture in custody of Fattah, as well as the mistreatment of his lawyer, el-Baqer, ‘as chilling illustrations of the ruthless tactics the Egyptian authorities are prepared to use to silence critics’.
Freedom House ranked Egypt as ‘not free’ in its 2023 Freedom in the World report on political rights and civil liberties, with the North African country earning 18 points out of a possible 100.
Development Diaries calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Hisham and adhere to international human rights agreements, including the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the country is a party.
Source: CIHRS
Photo source: CIHRS