Egyptian Islamists die in 'terror' jail

Dirty war: Fundamentalists held without trial are beaten, raped and denied medical help

ROBERT FISK

Cairo

In a sinister new development in the Egyptian government's war against its Islamist opponents, at least 26 captured fundamentalists have mysteriously died in custody in just eight months, most of them in a grim new jail far out in the Sahara desert.

The deaths are described by Egyptian lawyers as a campaign of "terror" to eliminate Islamist suspects before they are even brought to trial. They follow consistent reports of the beating, starvation and rape of inmates in the Wadi al-Jadid prison complex 200 miles north-west of Assiut.

A lawyer who managed to visit the new jail two months ago has shown the Independent signed statements by four prisoners who describe how their fellow inmates, on arrival at the jail, were stripped and whipped with wire, ordered to assume female names and then either beaten or forced to perform homosexual acts with other prisoners as punishments for breaking jail rules.

"Many of the prisoners are starved, and when they have been beaten, they have not received medical treatment - and so they die," the lawyer said after insisting that the Independent did not publish his name.

Twenty of the prisoners who have died were in their 20s and 30s. Most of their families have received certificates stating that they died of "sharp circulatory and respiratory failure".

In the case of Mustafa Iraqi, a 34-year-old Islamist lawyer, death in the Wadi al-Jadid prison was said to have been due to a "chest disease", but a fellow prisoner, Abdulla Ali Ahmed, testified that Iraqi had been tortured by security guards in the jail, and that wounds to his chest were deliberately left untreated. Police at the graveside at Iraqi's burial prevented any examination of the body.

When families have been allowed to see prisoners' bodies, they have almost invariably noticed that the dead man suffered severe weight loss. Other prisoners were said by the authorities to have died of "acute kidney failure" (Mohamed Ali Ahmed, 35), "acute pneumonia" (Ahmed Abd el-Maksoud, 28) or tuberculosis (Ayman Khalifa Haji, 27).

More typical was the case of 26-year-old Ali Mahmoud al-Reffie, who died in Wadi al-Jadid prison on 24 June, less than six months after his arrest. His family were summoned to receive his corpse at midnight and ordered by the police to bury it immediately. Security men stood by as Reffie's remains were lowered into his grave an hour later under police arc lamps. He had died, they said, of "sharp circulatory and respiratory failure", although no death certificate was issued.

Hafez abu Sada, the executive chairman of the Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights, which has catalogued many of the deaths and complained in vain to the Egyptian Minister of the Interior, believes the deliberate mistreatment of the prisoners and their incarceration in the new jail, far from their homes, is part of a systematic punishment. "These men have not been tried - some of them have been held since 1989 - and we cannot even get a reply from the Interior Ministry when we demand an explanation for all these deaths," he said.

The lawyer who demanded anonymity was less diplomatic. "The government is using this prison to dehumanise and shame these men. That is why they are given female names - do you know how insulting that is for a Muslim? - and that is why, if a guard is angry with a prisoner, he will order another inmate to rape him, right there in the cell. This happens regularly."

The same lawyer described how new arrivals at Wadi al-Jadid, in which around 3,500 Islamists are now being held, were taken 10 at a time from covered lorries and ordered to crawl through the main gate. "They are then forced to crawl down a 45ft corridor, all the while being beaten by guards on both sides. They are stripped and kicked by a man who gives each of them a woman's name. They must use this name all the time in the prison. They can wear only their underclothes for a week and then they are given a yellow prison uniform. There is no doctor, no prison hospital."

Reports of prisoners being forced to rape each other as punishment by guards have also emerged from the Wadi Natroun jail, near the desert road between Cairo and Alexandria. Here, too, inmates are forced to assume female names. "When he is first given the name, he must keep repeating it, shouting it out loud until he reaches the door of his cell," the lawyer said. "He and the other men then have to remain naked in the cell for two days."

Lawyers have been hampered in their efforts to visit clients in the jail by the refusal of prison officials to give their real names - for fear that their families could be murdered by members of the Islamic Jihad, whose savage war against President Hosni Mubarak's government has now cost the lives of at least 820 Egyptians.

Family members are also forced to wait for hours beneath the desert sun at both Wadi al-Jadid and Wadi Natroun to see their relatives, often being refused the statutory seven-minute visit because, according to lawyers, the official signatures on their visitors' passes are "illegible".

Dr Ossama el-Baz, Mr Mubarak's political affairs director, met Egyptian human rights groups for the first time in August to hear their complaints, and agreed to study their reports. Since then, there have been at least seven more deaths in custody.